subject: Am I Going To Have To Pay A Fuel Surcharge? [print this page] When you get any kind of a bill from a delivery company or a courier PA based, in addition to your base shipping charge you're going to see a number of different fees and surcharges. Some of these will be standard on every single order, like a processing fee, and others will be unique to orders depending on their circumstances, such as deliveries which are placed after hours, or which are requested on a holiday. Others will depend on external factors at the time, such as inclement weather delivery, and a fuel surcharge.
Fuel surcharges aren't added on to your bill based on the courier company wanting to make more money from you. Instead, they are an attempt by the couriers to try and keep their profit margins steady. Because they can't control the prices of fuel as they fluctuate, they have to try and manage their expenses to ensure that their drivers are still making a reasonable profit. In most courier companies, drivers pay for their own fuel out of their pockets, which means that as fuel prices go up, they are making less money, and more likely to quit and go look for other jobs. The couriers try and avoid this by having a fuel surcharge and then passing the amount of those surcharges on to their drivers to try and make up for the added expenditures they have been facing.
What this means is that it is going to change from week to week and month to month as to whether or not you are going to have to pay a fuel surcharge. The only way to get yourself a good indication before speaking to someone at the courier company is to simply check out the prices of gas compared to the last time you had a delivery. If there was no fuel surcharge the last time you had a delivery made, but the price of fuel has risen considerably since that time, then it is reasonable to expect to see a fuel surcharge on your next invoice. What many don't realize though is that there is a law which obligates courier and delivery companies to fully disclose information about the surcharges and fees that they assess. That means if you're wondering if you're going to have to pay this fee, all you have to do is ask them and they will both tell you if it applies, and how much it will be.
by: Paul McDuffy
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