Dimensional/Weight

Q4 planning · Modelled on the 2025–26 published schedule

What peak season actually costs you.

Everyone publishes the rate table. This gives you the number that matters: what demand surcharges add to your Q4 bill, where it lands, and which single change removes the most of it.

2026–27 rates are not published yet. This models UPS's 2025–26 demand surcharge schedule, which ran 28 Sep 2025 – 17 Jan 2026. Treat the output as a planning baseline, not a quote. Carriers usually publish in late summer — the surcharge tracker says what's confirmed, and this page switches over the day the new schedule lands.

Your peak volume

Your busy-season weekly volume, not your annual average.

80%
10%

Remaining 10% assumed commercial ground, which carries no per-service demand charge.

Read these off a recent invoice. They aren't inferred from dimensions — the trigger thresholds aren't published in a form we can verify, and guessing them would give you a confidently wrong number.

6%
1%
0%

Exposure

Added to your Q4 bill by demand surcharges

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Your biggest single lever

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When it lands

How this is calculated

No black box. Every figure comes from UPS's published demand surcharge schedule, and the arithmetic is weekly volume multiplied by the applicable rate across each demand period.

Two separate schedules are applied. Size and handling charges (Additional Handling, Large Package, Over Maximum) ran across the full 16-week window from 28 September. Per-service charges on Air, Ground Residential and Ground Saver ran across 12 weeks from 26 October. Both peak during the 5 weeks from 23 November to 27 December, which is why that block dominates the breakdown.
Demand surcharges stack on top of base surcharges. The figures here are the peak-season addition only. Your actual invoice also carries the base Additional Handling or Large Package charge, fuel, residential fees, and dimensional weight pricing. Real Q4 cost is meaningfully higher than this number — this isolates what peak season adds.
Standard-shipper rates only. UPS applied a separate, higher schedule to customers billed for more than 20,000 packages in a week, priced by volume against a June baseline and reaching several dollars per package at the top tier. If you're near that volume, this model understates your exposure — use UPS's own schedule.
UPS only. FedEx publishes its own peak surcharges but we couldn't confirm the amounts from a FedEx-published schedule, so they aren't modelled. If most of your volume is FedEx, treat this as indicative of shape rather than size.

Common questions

Why is Additional Handling usually the biggest line?

Because it's the collision of a mid-sized rate and a non-trivial share of parcels. Large Package and Over Maximum cost far more each, but hit fewer packages. Additional Handling at 6% of a few hundred parcels a week, across sixteen weeks, adds up faster than a handful of oversized items.

Can I avoid these by shipping earlier?

Partly. The size and handling demand charges applied from late September, so early shipping doesn't escape them — but the peak block from 23 November to 27 December carried the highest rates. Pulling volume forward out of that five-week window is where the saving is.

Are these negotiable?

On high-volume contracts, sometimes — caps and waivers more often than removal. Size-based charges are the hardest to get waived, which is why reducing packaging is usually more reliable than negotiating.

Why doesn't this detect surcharges from my box dimensions?

Because the trigger thresholds change and we couldn't confirm the current ones from a carrier-published rate guide. Inferring them from third-party summaries would produce a precise-looking number built on an unverified assumption. Your invoice already knows the answer, so this asks you instead.