Amazon's 3.5% fuel-and-logistics surcharge on Fulfillment by Amazon fees took effect Friday, April 17, covering US and Canadian FBA and Remote Fulfillment to Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. [1] The surcharge is applied against the fulfillment fee itself — roughly $0.17 per unit on average — and stacks on top of the January 2026 fee increase that had already added about $0.08 per unit. Amazon cited "elevated costs in fuel and logistics" driven by the Iran conflict, and called the charge temporary; sellers note Amazon's 2022 fuel surcharge was also called temporary and was folded into base fees in 2023. [2]

The paper's Monday standard opened the question of whether a second retailer would follow. Tuesday Day 5 holds the same answer: no retailer has. The Buy-with-Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment extension kicks in May 2. The only other carrier adding a surcharge this window is the US Postal Service, whose 8% temporary price hike on Ground Advantage and Parcel Select services takes effect April 26. UPS and FedEx have moved their existing fuel-surcharge schedules — now roughly 20-25% of total shipping costs on the latest Supply Chain Dive analysis — but have not launched parallel retailer surcharges. [3]

What the silence means, operationally: Amazon's 3.5% sits on the most margin-sensitive third-party-seller channel in US e-commerce without Walmart's Marketplace, Target's Plus, or Shopify's network matching. The surcharge is Amazon's solo test of whether the platform's pricing power is strong enough to pass through a line-item fuel cost that does not move in lockstep with the rest of the carrier stack. Day 5 is early. The May 2 extension is the second tranche.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco