Supply Chain Action Points
Read this first — the conclusion, and the moves to make:
- By 13 July 2026, get written confirmation of which fuel table each contract references, and which timestamp — ship date or pickup scan — assigns a parcel to a fuel week.
- Within 10 working days of the 6 to 12 July invoices, reconcile the fuel line on 20 sample shipments against the published table, and flag every line where the applied percentage is higher than the table your contract names.
- Re-quote customers on a four-week rolling average of the table rather than the latest week, and hold the June peak level as the floor until the average falls for four consecutive weeks.
- Set an alert at 39 percent: if the table crosses back above it, freeze new quotes for 48 hours and reprice before the next tender, because the invoice lags the market by three to four weeks.
Forwarder advisories show July express fuel surcharges easing from June's highs above 39%: DHL at 40.75% (6–12 July), UPS 39.0% and FedEx 38.25%. FedEx's US express table lists 30.75% for 6–12 July, down from 34.5% in mid-June, tracking softer kerosene-type jet fuel prices.
The Analysis
The table for 6 to 12 July is out. DHL at 40.75 percent, UPS at 39.0, FedEx at 38.25, and the FedEx US express table at 30.75, down from 34.5 in mid-June. Four numbers, one week, and a 7.5-point gap between two figures published by the same company.
Most shippers read the first three and feel relieved that the June peak above 39 percent is easing. I take the fourth number to the invoice.
A fuel surcharge is not a market story. It is a seven-day clock with a billing timestamp attached, and the money is not in the direction of the market. It is in which table your invoice was calculated from.
The published numbers, as they stand. DHL 40.75 percent for 6 to 12 July, UPS 39.0 percent, FedEx 38.25 percent. The FedEx US express table lists 30.75 percent for the same window, against 34.5 percent in mid-June. The advisories put the move down to softer kerosene-type jet fuel. That is the whole fact set, and it contains a gap that most teams will scroll straight past.
A surcharge is a percentage applied to a base rate, published for a seven-day window, and two consequences follow from that. The percentage is not your cost, because the base rate moves on its own schedule. And the window means a parcel tendered on Sunday night and a parcel tendered on Monday morning can be priced off two different tables, depending on which timestamp the carrier keys the billing to. Nobody in your building knows which timestamp that is. Ask in writing, and you will find the answer differs between carriers, and sometimes between services at the same carrier.
Who feels this and who does not. A shipper on an all-in contract sold the fuel risk to the carrier months ago and will feel nothing this week in either direction; that is a clean position and it is priced as one. A shipper on base-plus-surcharge sees every weekly move, which is fine if somebody is actually reading the table and bad if the table only ever reaches the invoice. Small shippers on retail rates see the move and cannot renegotiate it, so their only levers are service choice and ship date. By direction, an exporter sending samples and documents has a small absolute exposure; an importer taking inbound parcels freight-collect feels it inside the landed cost, where it is easiest to miss because that line was built by somebody else.
The timing is the part that costs money. The table for a given week is set before that week starts. The prices you gave customers for that week were probably built on last month's number, because that was the number you had. The benefit of a 3.75-point decline therefore arrives on an invoice three to four weeks after the week it belongs to, by which point the customer price is set and the margin is already booked at the old level. The gap between the week the table moves and the week your invoice reflects it is where this money is either captured or dropped.
Now the number nobody is talking about. FedEx published 38.25 percent and, on its US express table, 30.75 percent, for the same seven days. A 7.5-point spread inside one carrier, one week. The difference has to be scope: a different table, a different service, a different contract reference. Only one of those two numbers is yours, and the invoice is the only document that tells you which. If your agreement references the express table and the billing engine applies the headline figure, you are paying 7.5 points more than you agreed, on every shipment, every week, and the invoice will look entirely normal while it happens. That is not a market question. It is a reconciliation question, and it takes an afternoon.
Scale it, with my assumptions stated. Assume 5,000 parcels a week and an average base rate of 22 dollars. The move from 34.5 to 30.75 percent is 3.75 points, 0.825 dollars a parcel, 4,125 dollars a week. Now assume the invoice applied 38.25 percent instead of 30.75 on the same base: 7.5 points is 1.65 dollars a parcel, 8,250 dollars a week. If that billing gap exists, it is worth twice the market improvement. Everyone spent the week reading the fuel market. The money was in the table reference.
Follow one parcel across the week boundary, because that is where a warehouse loses money without noticing. The table runs Monday to Sunday. A parcel packed at 23:40 on Sunday and scanned at 00:10 on Monday is one parcel to your team and two different fuel weeks to the billing system, if the carrier keys on scan time. Nothing about the parcel changed except twelve minutes and a shift handover, and the difference lands four weeks later on a line nobody reads until the total looks wrong. Ask which timestamp keys the week, then write the answer into the dispatch rule.
The trap is treating one week as a trend. Kerosene moves, the table resets every seven days, and a 3.75-point decline can be gone inside a fortnight. Re-quote customers down 4 points on the strength of one week and you have sold a permanent discount against a temporary input, and the reversal lands on you, at the worst hour, on a Monday, with the invoices for last month still in the drawer.
Hold the customer price, bank the difference for four consecutive weeks, and keep that buffer for the week the table crosses back above 39. Not a forecast. A rule that survives being wrong, which is more than most fuel strategies manage.
↑ Back to the key points