FedEx announced their Express service rate increases, which will become effective Monday, January 2nd 2012. The announced rate increase is 5.9%, offset somewhat with the now standard two percentage point decrease in the fuel surcharge index. This is the same announced increase as the past two years. The base rates may average the announced increases; however, the actual cell by cell increases for domestic shipments range from 2.0% to 10.0%. The following synopsis will highlight some particularly hard hit areas. Higher zone express shippers could experience increases in the 7.0% range before the fuel adjustment. Surcharges for residential delivery are up 9.1%, while the delivery area surcharge is up 8.1% for commercial and 9.1% for residential, and the extended area DAS is up a substantial 8.3%. The biggest impact to your cost may very well be in the increases to many of the common accessorial charges that were announced for 2012. 

On the international side, the average outbound increase is approximately 6.0%. However, there are some isolated but substantial decreases (US to Guam shipments are down 25.1%), while US to Macau is up a whopping 46.7%. As in previous years, the devil is in the details. We’ll go over this in the sections in the PDF (click the download button below).