Fuel Prices Are Surging. Here's How to Protect Your Margins Today.

Diesel is up 20–30% in a matter of weeks. The Iran conflict has sent fuel markets into a tailspin, and roll-off haulers are feeling it on every run. If you are running 5–15 trucks, that is thousands of dollars per week in margin erosion—and it happened fast.

Most haulers absorb the hit. Not because they want to, but because adjusting pricing feels like a nightmare. Call every customer? Update every quote? Reprice every contract? By the time you finish, fuel has moved again.

There is a better way. If you are on Klau, you can protect your margins in about two minutes. Here is how.

Why Most Haulers Don't Adjust

Traditional dispatch and billing software makes price changes painful. Fuel goes up, and the hauler has to manually update every price sheet, every quote template, every standing order. Some systems require you to call support just to change a rate.

So haulers eat the cost. They tell themselves it will come back down. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not, and by the time they act, they have lost tens of thousands in margin they will never recover.

The problem is not that haulers are bad at business. The problem is that their software makes it too hard to respond quickly.

The Klau Approach: Mileage-Based Surcharges

Klau has a distance-based surcharge system built into every storefront. When a customer enters their address, Klau automatically calculates the distance from their site to your nearest yard using haversine distance. Based on that distance, a surcharge tier kicks in.

You define the tiers. Here is an example setup:

• Local (0–10 miles): $0 surcharge
• Standard (10–25 miles): $35 surcharge
• Extended (25–50 miles): $75 surcharge
• Remote (50+ miles): $125 surcharge

Customers see the surcharge transparently when they enter their address—before they complete their order. No surprises on the invoice. No awkward phone calls after the fact.

When fuel prices move, you update the tier amounts. That is it. Every new order automatically picks up the new surcharge. Takes 30 seconds.

Critically, surcharges are snapshotted per order. When a customer places an order, the surcharge at that moment is locked in. If you raise your tiers next week, it does not retroactively change orders already in progress. Your customers get the price they were quoted. You get the flexibility to adjust going forward.

The Flat Fuel Surcharge Option

Not every operation needs distance tiers. If you want something simpler, Klau also supports a flat fuel surcharge fee that applies to every order.

You can set it as a flat dollar amount (e.g., $25 per order) or as a percentage of the order total. It shows up as a separate line item at checkout so customers understand exactly what they are paying and why.

For haulers operating in a tight service area where distance does not vary much, a flat surcharge is often the right call. You can always switch to distance-based tiers later if your service area grows.

How to Set It Up

If you are already on Klau, this takes about two minutes:

• Step 1: Go to Settings > Storefront > Pricing
• Step 2: Switch to Location-Based pricing (if you are not already using it)
• Step 3: Click “Use Standard Tiers” for a one-click starting point, or add custom tiers with your own distance ranges and amounts
• Step 4: Adjust surcharge amounts based on your current fuel costs
• Alternative: Instead of (or in addition to) tiers, add a Fuel Surcharge fee—flat cents or percentage—that applies to all orders

That is it. Every new order through your storefront will automatically include the surcharge. Customers see it upfront. It settles automatically when the job completes.

The Math

Let's run a quick example. Say you are running 8 deliveries per day, averaging 20 miles each.

At $5/gallon diesel with a truck getting 4 mpg, each 20-mile run costs $25 in fuel. That is $200/day in fuel just for deliveries.

Now add a $35 Standard tier surcharge on those 8 orders. That is $280/day recovered. The surcharge more than covers your fuel costs and gives you margin protection even when prices spike further.

Scale that to a five-day week: $1,400 in recovered fuel costs. Over a month, that is $5,600 that would have come straight out of your margin if you had done nothing.

And this is a conservative example. Many haulers run longer distances, more deliveries, or both. The numbers get very real, very fast.

Act Now, Not Later

Fuel prices are unpredictable. Your margins do not have to be.

Every week you wait to set up surcharges is a week of margin erosion you cannot get back. The haulers who survive volatile fuel markets are not the ones who absorb the hits—they are the ones who have systems in place to respond instantly.

Set up your surcharges today. It takes less time than filling your tank.