FedEx Corp. has made it official: It is dropping the word peak from its description of delivery surcharges and replacing it with the word demand.
Effective Sept. 4, “any reference to ‘peak’ in a surcharge name will be replaced with and rebranded as “demand,” the company (NYSE: FDX) said in a notice on its website. The notice said that “during times of elevated volumes, high demand for capacity, and increased operating costs across our network, FedEx will implement demand surcharges. Demand surcharges are determined for each market based on regular assessments of shipment volume and capacity within our network to accommodate.”
FedEx is following the lead of rival UPS Inc., (NYSE: UPS) which earlier this year dropped “peak” from written descriptions of surcharges and replaced it with “demand.”
Until the pandemic, surcharges were reserved for the peak holiday shipping season. However, the surges in e-commerce demand and shipping pushed both carriers to impose pandemic-related surcharges. Those fees were never dropped and instead have become year-round phenomena.