subject: Will I Get Billed For A Fuel Surcharge? [print this page] Whenever you ship something with a courier company of any description, from anywhere, they are always going to assess your fees based on their own expenses. That is how courier companies arrive at the formulas that they use to set their rates. That way, they know that they can charge you enough to cover their expenses and still make a profit. How much profit, depends on a lot of things, such as what the competition is doing, but the base fees are derived from their expenses. That is why sometimes you will find a Northwest Arkansas courier service that will assess a fuel surcharge to your courier bill.
The fuel surcharge that you will often see added to an invoice from a courier company is based totally on the current fuel prices in your area. That is why a courier in a particular region like Northwest Arkansas might assess a fuel surcharge while a courier in another part of the state might not. If gas prices were lower in the south than the north, there would be no reason to add that fuel surcharge to the price of that company's client's invoices.
The reason that this has to be added on to the bills is so that the courier can keep their employees satisfied. Most courier drivers work on a model where they have to pay for the fuel in their vehicles that they drive while making their deliveries. Most own those vehicles as well. As a result, if fuel prices rise significantly, they are spending far more money, and not making anything more. This can quickly make working as a courier a non-profitable job.
When this happens, the drivers are likely to start looking for other jobs quickly. That is why the companies levy the fuel surcharge. They then make sure that all the proceeds that are brought in to the company through that fee are sent right back to the drivers. The point has never been to try and increase the profits of the company by assessing that fee, but just to equalize the earnings of the driver to the point that they should be at.
This means the best way to know if you're going to have to pay a fuel surcharge is just to see if the fuel prices have risen recently in your area. If they haven't and the courier company is charging you a surcharge for fuel, ask why.
