With most Florida schools ready to begin their school year, parents have been taking advantage of the back-to-school sales tax holiday.
The next shopping palooza is Halloween followed by the beginning of the Christmas holiday shopping season.
But a new report from the National Retail Federation (NRF) says with new tariff increases and rising fuel surcharges, a significant increase in cost will hit Florida retailers, e-commerce brands, and small businesses as they prepare for the busiest shopping months of the year.
Some locations in the state are seeing gasoline prices around the $ 4-a-gallon mark. Rising diesel prices, reaching $4.58 per gallon, have prompted major carriers to keep their fuel surcharges high.
Just recently, UPS’s Domestic Ground fuel surcharge is 24.75%, while FedEx’s Ground and Home Delivery fuel surcharge is 25%.
The NRF has also warned that ongoing geopolitical tensions due to the conflict involving Iran are continuing to disrupt supply chains and add to transportation costs.
These mounting cost pressures are making profitability increasingly dependent on how efficiently retailers and small businesses manage their shipping operations.
As these cost pressures intensify, experts say many businesses are still managing fulfillment through disconnected systems, limiting visibility into shipping costs, reducing operational efficiency, and making it increasingly difficult to protect profit margins.
Kyle Henzel, COO at Ship.com, believes that retailers and e-commerce businesses can no longer afford to treat shipping as a back-office function.
“To protect profitability, they need real-time visibility into their shipping operations and the pricing fluctuations driven by fuel surcharges, carrier fees, and tariff-related cost increases,” said Henzel.
