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FedEx to impose residential delivery surcharge

Levy will impact enterprise customers, takes effect in mid-February

Still more surcharges. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX) said Friday that it will impose a 30 cent per-package surcharge on U.S. residential delivery traffic tendered by large customers, effective Feb. 15.

The surcharge will apply to customers that shipped, on average, more than 30,000 packages per week from Jan. 4 to Jan. 31, FedEx said in a note on its website. The levy will apply to any combination of FedEx’s air, ground and last-mile delivery parcels that hit or exceed the 30,000 weekly volume threshold, FedEx said. 

The levy, once it takes effect, will remain until further notice, FedEx said. 

Customers only using the last-mile service, SmartPost, will be exempt from the new surcharge, FedEx said. The SmartPost service, which for years was managed in conjunction with the U.S. Postal Service, has largely been taken in house and is operated under the FedEx network.


In its statement, FedEx said the continuing surge in e-commerce volumes due to the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put elevated demands on its network, resulting in higher operating costs.

The announcement should have surprised no one given the ongoing volume spikes, said Rob Martinez, founder and co-CEO of Shipware, LLC, a parcel consultancy. 

13 Comments

  1. Tpaulson

    Paying the shipping charge is to get it delivered to our homes. Charge more and you will see many businesses use another carrier. There is a pandemic going on right now. HELLO!!!

  2. Cathie S

    Hell I ordered from Walmart on line from from my HMO gift card for over the counter stuff every quarter. I have over 700 worth of deliveries and they don’t know the difference between a Apt. 2 and Apt. 5 and 2 are thieves which has stolen many of my package. Because Fedex employee need to go back to school and learn their numbers again. So screw a sur charge.

  3. Kim Taylor

    FedEx is already the inferior package delivery company where I live. Out of the last five packages that I have had come by FedEx, four of them were delivered to the wrong address, and all of them were extremely slow in transit. UPS, on the other hand, has always been on time and accurate in their deliveries.

  4. Dave Furgal

    Let me understand this. FedEx business and profits are through the roof because of the pandemic, so lets charge the large discount rate customers more money so that FedEx can make even more profit. FedEx set the rates for the large discount customers. So why did they not just increase that rate and not blame the Corona Virus and residential customers. Hmm, delivering to a residential address is causing issues with FedEx delivering to a residence but not a problem delivering to a commercial address. Or maybe, could it be that the cost of claims for packages stolen by porch pirates is the real reason for raising shipping charges to residences.

    They too are having to take responsibility relating to the porch piracy pandemic. A package delivered to me by FedEx was supposed to have my signature on delivery. The package was just left on my porch without my signature being asked for. However, when I checked the tracking number on the FedEx website, the driver just entered on his tablet that I signed for the package.

    1. Tcs53

      Chances are that the FedEx driver doesn’t actually work for FedEx. They work for a third party and get paid by FedEx for the delivery. It’s a program that’s been going on for years. The majority of FedEx trucks are owner operators or some type of third party logistics.

  5. andrew williams

    I will no longer accept anything that takes a signature from them. They refuse to work with me on delivery times and possible pickup at a FedEx location. I’ve told them before to not even bother to deliver anything here but they refuse to adhere to that

Comments are closed.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.