Fuel surcharges for international air express shipments continued to fall around the world thismonth and are expected to drop further in response to lower oil prices amid difficult economic
conditions.In Europe, all four integrators DHL, TNT, UPS and FedEx reduced their surcharges for June. TNT,which has the highest level, reduced its fuel surcharge from 20% in May to 19.5% for the period of2-29 June. DHL and FedEx both reduced their surcharges to 16.5% from 17% in May while the UPSsurcharge dropped from 15.5% in May to 14.5% this month.
In the USA, FedEx and DHL reduced their surcharges by one percentage point to 9% in June from10% last month and UPS also reduced its surcharge by one percentage point from 11% in May to 10%this month.
Customers in Asia Pacific are also paying less this month, except for TNT, although they stillhave to pay the highest levels of fuel surcharges, in most cases. DHL reduced its surcharge to21.5% this month from 22.5% in May. FedEx is down 1.5 percentage points to 17% from 18.5% in Mayand UPS is also down from 17.5% last month to 16.5% in June. TNT is the only integrator to keep itsAsian surcharge on same level as in May this month with 19.5%.
The air express fuel surcharges for June reflect the oil price level two months ago. The fourintegrators calculate their surcharges based on indices showing the previous month’s oil pricelevel and announce them in advance for the following month. This results in a two-month time lagbetween the fuel price and surcharge change.
Over the last month, Brent crude showed some ups and downs with a clear downward trend over thelast few days dropping to nearly $100 and was trading at $100.98 in London today. With similar upsand downs throughout last month, WTI crude also showed a slight downward trend over the last daysand traded at $93.83 this morning, slightly below the level a month ago.
The downward trend of oil prices is an indicator for further drops in fuel surcharges in thenext few months.
