Why Carrier Surcharges Deserve a Closer Look

Carrier contracts are full of fine print — and some of the most expensive details live in the footnotes.

Even if you’ve negotiated strong base rates with FedEx or UPS, you might still be paying 20% to 50% more than expected due to surcharges. These are line-item fees tacked onto your invoice based on delivery characteristics — and they often go unnoticed or unquestioned.

📦 The Usual Suspects: What’s Driving Up Your Costs?

Here are some of the most common (and costly) surcharges to watch for:

• Fuel Surcharges
• Tied to fluctuating fuel costs and updated weekly. You may have locked in great base rates, but fuel fees can quietly double the cost of certain services.
• Residential Delivery Fees
• Applied when a package goes to a location carriers deem “residential,” even if it’s a business run from home.
• Delivery Area Surcharges (DAS)
• These hit deliveries in rural or hard-to-reach areas, but the zones aren’t always intuitive. We’ve seen DAS apply within city limits.
• Additional Handling Charges
• Triggered by weight, dimensions, or packaging type (e.g., cylindrical or metal packaging).
• Oversize Package Fees
• Packages exceeding certain dimensional thresholds can add $20–$50 (or more) per shipment.
• Saturday Delivery Surcharges
• Easy to miss unless you’re actively auditing delivery dates against your invoice.

🧾 Why These Fees Go Unnoticed

Surcharges are often scattered across invoices and mixed in with hundreds (or thousands) of other line items. Most companies simply don’t have the time or systems in place to comb through every shipment.

And carriers aren’t exactly advertising when these fees kick in. You typically won’t know until it shows up on the bill — and by then, you’re chasing it after the damage is done.

💡 The RCS Approach: Audit. Flag. Recover.

At RCS Audit, we dig into each package-level detail. We:

• Monitor trends across your surcharges
• Identify unexpected spikes
• Flag contract misalignments
• Challenge surcharges where applicable
• And recover money you might not realize you’re owed

This isn’t about playing “gotcha” with carriers — it’s about holding them accountable to what was agreed upon, and making sure your shipping costs reflect the real terms of your contract.

⚠️ The Silent Cost Creep

Even companies that review shipping costs monthly often overlook surcharges because they fluctuate, scale with volume, and are easy to chalk up as inevitable.

But the truth is:

They’re not always correct. And they’re certainly not always fair.

📉 Bottom Line

If you’re not actively monitoring your surcharges, your shipping spend could be bleeding — silently — every single week.

You negotiated the rates.

We’ll make sure you’re not overpaying on everything else.

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