I can see where you’re coming from Simon but is there really any need for “fuel surcharges” when every transaction between us is negotiated separately anyway? People are free to adjust their prices to a suitable level at any time so why complicate things with a fuel surcharge mechanism?
The reason the likes of DHL and TNT apply fuel surcharges is to give them freedom to adjust their contractually agreed rates (and their published tariffs) to allow for increased fuel prices. If they didn’t have contractually agreed rates or published tariffs then there would be no need for the surcharges – they could just increase their rates instead.
By all means put a mechanism like this in place for your customers, and for subcontractors that work for you regularly on an agreed ‘pence per mile’ basis but please don’t encourage people to adopt this as a standard on here. Apart from confusing the hell out of everyone it will increase the amount of time spent on admin and increase those little disagreements where one party claims that a surcharge had been agreed and the other claims that it hadn’t.
I’ve just had an invoice from a ‘Network’ supplier who’s started applying a fuel surcharge on every job. I’ve no problem at all with him increasing his prices but his £20 minimum charge has now become £21.60 and the £181 job he did for me now costs £195.48. Call me picky but it’s a lot easier, and less likely to result in an input error, for me to enter £22 or £196 onto our systems.
So by all means PUT YOUR PRICES UP if you think that it’s right for your business but PLEASE don’t f*** about adding percentages onto every job.
Posted under Courier Financial Issues
Posted by Alec at 8:12 pm, April 21, 2008