Maersk raises UK and Ireland haulage fuel surcharge to 20%
Which of your shipments pay the 20% first, the exports or the boxes already at sea?
The fee is a percentage of the haulage price, announced on a Thursday for the following Monday. The reports leave out what it was before and which shipments the date catches.
Maersk is raising the fuel surcharge on its inland haulage in the UK and Ireland to 20% from 12 October. The fee is a percentage of the haulage price, so every route pays a different amount and each quote has to be recalculated. Which shipments pay first depends on how Maersk defines the start date.
Maersk is raising the fuel surcharge on its inland haulage in the UK and Ireland to 20% from Monday 12 October. It announced the change on Thursday 8 October. The fee covers the truck or rail leg between the port and the customer's door, and this notice does not touch the ocean freight. Every haulage quote on those routes has to be recalculated in four days, two of them a weekend.
So what is the 20% a percentage of, and what was it before? It is charged on the haulage price. Reuters gives no previous level. Maersk's September notices, as carried by the trade press, do. From 1 October the fee stood at 10.6% in the UK and 7.2% in Ireland. A move to 20% nearly doubles the UK fee and takes the Irish one to almost three times its level.
A percentage of haulage has no single amount. Haulage is priced by distance from the port, so the surcharge in pounds is different for every delivery zone. Two boxes off the same ship pay the same 20% and very different money.
Compare the fuel charge Maersk passes on at the UK port of Felixstowe, which is £4.13 per laden import container. A rating system holds that as one figure against a container type. The inland fee has to point at another charge line instead. The system needs to know which haulage codes it sits on, whether other inland additionals are inside the base, and how it rounds.
Forwarders have the harder version. One who sells Maersk carrier haulage as an all-in door rate has to reprice every zone, and decide what to do with quotes already sent.
For new quotes, the four days are the whole window. For invoices, it depends on which date Maersk means. Under the September notices, the level is fixed by a price calculation date. For most shipments that is the estimated departure of the first vessel on the latest booking confirmation.
If the same rule holds, UK exports booked on vessels sailing from 12 October pay 20% at once. Imports would follow more slowly, because boxes already at sea keep the level in force when they departed.
The thing to watch is Maersk's next notice. The fee has come down before: in August it was 3.8% in the UK. If diesel eases and the percentage steps down from 20% again, the fee is working as a pass-through.
