Deliveries of Lubricants, DEF and Fuel to customers will see a Temporary Fuel Surcharge (TFS) added to their orders to account for similar charges pressed upon the market by suppliers themselves. SCL receives and distributes products from these suppliers to customers throughout California. This additional fee, which is a pass-through fee, accounts for the additional fuel costs suppliers are experiencing in their own delivery of the product from refinery to SCL. 

SCL will continue our standard Fuel Surcharge for customers and the additional TFS will be line itemed on invoices to cover some of the increased costs of fuel. The TFS will be calculated according to a range of variables including warehouse geography, delivery location and distance, and gallon order minimums.

“Given the volatility in the oil markets and the uncertainty around the underlying cause—the war in Ukraine—it is difficult to predict how long the Temporary Fuel Surcharge will be in place,” said SCL’s VP of Customer Solutions, Dan Dziwanowski. “We anticipate this to be in place for March, April and May and hope that it can be rolled back pending a calming of the oil markets and world affairs which we hope will bring the price of oil and gasoline down to normalized levels.”

SCL recognizes that the TFS comes at a time when many businesses are already experiencing an increase in operating costs from rising prices for finished lubricants and fuel for their fleets—not to mention spikes in labor and other costs. 

To minimize the burden of the TFS, SCL recommends:

• Contact your sales representative. Many businesses are finding that they can lower their operational costs through other means which lessens the hit to the bottom line of fuel or surcharges.
• Consider “bulking up” deliveries to reduce the overall number of fuel deliveries to your business so that economy of scale can limit the impact of delivery charges overall.
• Consult with SCL on storage solutions so that you can store more lubricants or DEF  onsite, requiring less deliveries. Tank monitors provide assurance that you will not run out.
• Leverage the significant advances in technology and products over the past few years to look at extending drain intervals and other optimizations.

“Many businesses trust SCL and our reliable, world-class logistics system to deliver fuel, lubricants and DEF on time whenever and wherever needed, leading to multiple deliveries per week” added Dziwanowski. “We’re happy to serve customers in this capacity but it may be time to rethink that approach and place larger orders where we can deliver in bulk so that delivery fees are lessened. We also highly recommend taking a big picture view of operational costs because more often than not we can help identify significant savings. Many fleet managers don’t realize just how much they can save through optimizations. 

Click here for additional analysis and resources for managing through the energy crisis.