Diesel is swinging week to week: which Monday's price does your dray fuel surcharge read?

Not my market, but I keyed trucking invoices in Johannesburg before I moved into compliance, so this one I know from the admin chair. Our diesel price is adjusted once a month, on the first Wednesday, so a surcharge clause only has to name a month. The contracts on my desk read the loading date. Even then, any load that sat over a changeover started an email war, and ours goes up hard this Wednesday.

With a weekly print I would want to see the clause first: does yours actually name the day, or does each side quote whichever Monday suits them?

I read this the way I read a loss: which paper fixes the day. Pickup has the gate ticket, delivery has the signed receipt, the quote has an email. Does your clause name the document, or only the event?

And keep the two costs apart. Above the cap is the trucker's cost, not a loss to the cargo. No cargo policy pays for a box that sat waiting on a chassis. Delay is excluded even when an insured peril caused it.

Quarter past one here and I just pulled the last three dray bills off the clip by the dock door, because I realised I have been paying this line for years without once asking which number it reads. Not one of them says which Monday. A percentage, the word fuel, and a total. I called the forwarder on my lunch and the fellow on their desk said pickup, he thinks, and that he would check.

So that is the answer from the cargo end: nobody on my side knows, and I am the one who signs the cheque. No cap either. A shop with forty people on the floor does not get a cap, it gets the rate sheet.

The price came down in this morning's print, for whatever that helps on next week's bills. Does your bill show the week, or is that something a shipper has to ask for in writing?