#logistics-operations

These fees are charged by the carriers. I can’t speak to the regionals, but Resi, DAS, Extended DAS, and Fuel are typically charged by FedEx and UPS.

USPS doesn’t have those surcharges as they visit every household in the US nearly every day already, so no need for additional charges to make that trip.

DHL has a fuel surcharge, normally around $.10 per pound.

Your luck in negotiating those out will be low, as when they’re applied, it’s in instances where they’re pass-through costs from the carrier.

Ship Monk would have been better served to give you an average of postage for your shipment weights with those surcharge averages included.

For us, Residential is over 85% of shipments. DAS and EDAS (rural and super rural) are about 17% combined.

In your case, I’m assuming your packages are bit heavier, or you’re choosing a swifter/guaranteed service for delivery, instead of the lighter weight / non-gtd services from USPS and DHL.

Oh, and you could potentially bring your own carrier rates, but even if you negotiated those fees out of your agreement, the carrier will still incur those costs, so your discounts on the base rates won’t be as competitive to make up for it.

Following, we were interested in working with them as well.

We've done quite a bit in the invoice auditing space with Shipmonk (won back 6 figures for multiple brands). Oftentimes there are issues where the wrong shipping method or box size was chosen or the charges didn't match in general.

Re: bringing your own rates, most will let you do so but will charge you a manifest fee (surcharge) to do so.

Happy to share notes!

ShipMonk should have given you expected residential surcharge, DAS and Extended DAS if you provided them with shipment history. They have done so for me multiple times.

Happy to give you an assist if needed.

If you bring your own courier rates, ShipMonk is going to charge a per order fee to use those couriers.

@Chad Michael Carleton - thank you for your input! This is really helpful.

I have no issue paying for the surcharges if they are truly pass through, but there is definitely a substantial margin SM baked into the fees. I was charged more than $9 in additional fees for 1 shipment that is under 2lbs (apparel, so poly bag instead of box)

We have a very standard 3-5 day shipping speed - the shipping label costs that SM provides are on par with what we can get normally, but the additional fees are where they become incredibly uncompetitive.

Thanks for letting me know that USPS and DHL don’t charge the additional fees - I’ll see if SM can use USPS and DHL in cases where there are the addn fees

I asked to bring my own labels/rates to SM but they said they would charge an additional $5 surcharge for this….

I just feel like it has been a complete bait and switch- they shared very competitive rates for pick and pack, shipping, etc and conveniently left out the additional fees that make their rates uncompetitive.

Rather than get into a long, drawn out thing with them, I’d rather just bring my own rates (without getting charged a bogus $5 surcharge) and ride out my year-long contract - I’m thinking that having them only use USPS and DHL for some locations would work, but would love everyone’s thoughts on if there are other options

It's often a fairly simply comparison - if you can get more competitive rates yourself, then what your 3PL can offer (even with the label surcharge they might charge) you should use your rates.

Any 3PL that is unwilling to allow you to bring in your own rates is one that doesn't have your best interests in mind.

ShipMonk is a little funky in that they have their "proprietary" service levels ... there isn't a whole lot of transparency in what "Shipmonk Economy" is, etc, but it works for many.

We see 100's of pricing contracts for brands of all shapes and sizes, so feel free to DM me and I can try to help!

Negotiating courier rates are volume, time & situational dependent.

True that eCom brands can sometimes get better rates than 3PLs. This is because a 3PL typically has to have 3x the volume of a brand to get the same rates. Couriers prefer owning the relationship with the brand, because unlike 3PLs they are likely not rate shopping their rates vs competitors.

It's really volume dependent though, if @Danny C doesn't have significant monthly volume 30k orders a month or more), there is no way he'd be able to get better rates than a 3PL, particularly when they are rate shopping and using multiple nodes.

I'd say it's impossible to negotiate rates better than ShipMonk when factoring in that $5 3rd party label surcharge.

Fair - and $5 per label is obscene. I typically see $0-$0.50.

Yeah, I hate these fees. Most shipping software offering commercial pricing (such as Amazon, Shopify, ShipStation, etc.) won't charge these fees. For express shipping, look into FedEx One Rate if your packages fit within their size limits.

@Danny C just FYI on checking now my UPS invoice, $9 in fees is likely residential express ($3.10 on my invoice), fuel Surcharge ($4 range) if there's a "Delivery area Surcharge" it's another $7.70..

Upon checking my recent invoice, almost all of my shipments have more than $9 in "additional fees"..

We use ShipMonk as well, and have been facing the same issues.

After a lot of attempts, their reps have finally started taking our matter seriously and are evaluating all the surcharges and obscene adjustment rates.

Hopefully this gets resolved smoothly and asap.