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DHL eCommerce unit discloses peak-season surcharges

Levies to range between 20 cents and $5 per package depending on various factors

DHL eCommerce discloses peak season surcharges (Photo: DHL eCommerce)

DHL eCommerce, the e-commerce unit of German transport and logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL (NASDAQ:DPSGY) disclosed its peak-season delivery surcharges for U.S. parcel shipments, with levies ranging from 20 cents to $5 per piece depending on the parcel’s size, length of haul and delivery times.

The surcharges begin on Oct. 3 and end on Christmas Day. The unit will impose a 20-cent-per-piece surcharge on all shipments weighing less than 1 pound and moving within the lower 48 states. Surcharges will rise to 30 cents for shipments moving to and from noncontiguous U.S. locations such as Alaska and Hawaii, the unit said.

The unit will impose a 29-cent surcharge on all contiguous U.S. deliveries of parcels weighing 1 to 25 pounds and with either two-to-three-day or two-to-five-day delivery windows. The surcharges will rise to between 75 cents and $5 per piece for service to noncontiguous locations depending on the specific weight breaks.

The DHL unit, which doesn’t operate its own delivery equipment and uses the U.S. Postal Service as its exclusive last-mile partner, will also impose surcharges on two Postal Service products. One surcharge will be 30 cents per piece on all deliveries of first-class mail parcels. separately, surcharges on the Postal Service’s Priority Mail two-to-three-day delivery service will range from 25 cents up to $5 per piece. The higher end will apply to parcels weighing 21 to 70 pounds and delivered 600 miles or more.


Returns surcharges will range from 45 cents to $1 per piece depending on the returns product that is selected, the unit said.

The DHL unit circulated the information only among its network of customers. Intelligent Audit, a parcel auditing firm, released the correspondence externally several days after DHL eCommerce disclosed it on Sept. 1.

DHL eCommerce does not operate its own equipment.


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.