Why do couriers charge fuel duty?

One of the biggest costs in international shipping is the cost of fuel used to transport your documents or packages to international destinations.
TWL offer very competitive pricing for all our UK and International shipments and as a result our margins are very slim.
When fuel costs rise suddenly, as they can often do with little or no notice, we would need to adjust our rates accordingly in order to be able to provide a cost effective service yet run an economic business. This would mean per KG rates being updated on a monthly basis at the very least.
Like most courier services we find that the most transparent way of doing this is to separate the fuel component of the cost of transportation, and charge an additional percentage based on the prevailing fuel costs.
Doing this allows us to quote a fixed rate with a fuel percentage that varies month by month. So when fuel costs go down, your bills go down.
Unlike power companies that put up prices very quickly yet take longer to put them down, our surcharges are based on the Jet Fuel Price monitor and vary in line with this index.
More information on this monitor is to be found on the IATA website here.