Managing Customer Costs when Fuel Costs Rise

Here at Alaska Air Forwarding we pride ourselves on working hard for every customer who reaches out to us for shipping. Part of this process is mapping out a delivery plan that will transport their needed goods or equipment in the fastest and most efficient way. However, another big part of our work process is to keep costs as low as possible for our customers. To a certain degree, we have some control over costs based on the shipping method, but, one thing we cannot control are fuel costs. Fuel costs are determined by the price of crude oil as well as supply and demand; things which we cannot control for our customers.  So how do we manage the cost of shipping for our customers when fuel costs rise? Here are some ways we manage this issue.

MANAGING FUEL COSTS

As we mentioned above, we have no control over the price of fuel and when fuel prices rise, it impacts EVERYTHING. If you’ve ever noticed that when our economy is in a time of rising fuel costs, it doesn’t take long for the costs of everything else to follow. Why is this the case? Well, when fuel costs rise, everyone involved in the shipping process loses revenue because it costs significantly more to transport the goods.  How is this revenue recovered? By raising prices on the consumer.  However, when it comes to our customers, we prefer to do things a little differently. Here at Alaska Air Forwarding, we do our very best to keep shipping costs low, even when fuel costs are rising. Below are a few of our cost-saving options that are always available to our customers, but come in particularly handy when fuels costs are high.

• Shipping Methods: Standard and Economy shipping are two methods we offer that can be very cost effective and helpful in defraying high fuel costs. Our Standard shipping is a dependable and cost effective 2-3 day delivery method. Our Economy Shipping saves even more money by offering a 3-5 day shipping method.
• Shipment Consolidation: We are able to make arrangements to “Ship and Hold” freight from various shippers. This allows shipments to be held in a warehouse and then consolidated into larger shipments before reaching their final destination. Shipment Consolidation basically enables a large amount of freight to be shipped in one shipment thus dispersing the shipping costs to many customers and ultimately saving them money.
• Intermodal: Here at AAF, we have the ability to transport freight via water shipments.  We load weekly containers to Dutch Harbor, which allows us to offer extra space to companies needing to ship to Alaska. Because we do this on a weekly basis, we know the exact costs and how much we can ship each week. This allows us to offer affordable shipping methods during times of peak fuel costs.

Unfortunately, high fuel costs are part of life and something that we have no control over.  Thankfully, they do tend to be cyclical and are not impacting shipping on a regular basis.  Over the years, we’ve learned how to keep an eye on the factors that influence fuel costs and begin to implement our cost saving measures in a timely way that seems to ease the burden for our customers.

If you’re looking for a safe and cost-effective way to ship your freight, contact us. We can offer you a quote and get your shipment in process quickly.