Fuel Surcharge Calculations Changing Under CLEAR

With the Postal Service preparing to move contracts to its CLEAR system, it’s also looking to change how fuel reimbursements are calculated. 

USPS officials relayed planned changes during a July 19 meeting of the Joint Business Process Improvement Committee, a monthly pow-wow between postal officials and NSRMCA representatives, according to NSRMCA President John Sheehy. 

Sheehy laid out the intended process, which starts with fuel being removed from the contract and pegged at 6.5 MPG plus the weekly national average. The MPG is based on the national average that freight carriers use for fuel surcharges.  

Under the current system, suppliers set their own MPG. 

Suppliers would absorb or lose any dollars affected by that removal from the remaining totals, Sheehy said. After that, suppliers would apply a rate per trip for all trips in the contract without going over the money available. 

The proposed fuel surcharge matrix would be calculated per mile, rather than by the gallon, as it is now. Thus, in the new model, it would be a “weekly adjustment on the gallons of fuel in the contract,” according to Sheehy. 

“You’d have a fixed rate for the trip,” Sheehy said, before giving an example. “So, let’s say that a trip is $500 and your fuel is 70 cents a mile. They take 70 times the mileage on that trip, and that’s your fuel payment. That cents per mile would be gotten to by whatever that national average is that week.” 

Under the existing system, the supplier is paid the DOE index price times the number of gallons. 

Sheehy emphasized that this is simply a proposal and nothing is official yet.