How Shipping Surcharges and Fees Work - Desteia

How Shipping Surcharges and Fees Work

Shipping surcharges are a crucial component of maritime trade. That is why we examined their true impact in shipping costs as a whole.

Jose Luis Sabau | March 27, 2025 | Macro

Fees and surcharges are held as the hidden pain of the maritime industry. As logistics operators plan for the future, they need to know how much they will be charged for transportation and what share of their total cost it will be. Thus, having an industry with a number of additional fees can be dangerous for any form of planning.

But just how prominent are these fees, really? And, most crucially, how much should operators worry about them in the first place?

In this essay, we attempt to understand just how much surcharges and fees impact the maritime industry. That is, to uncover what share of the total price to transport a container is made up from additional charges. Our analysis suggests that surcharges are only a small fraction of prices that vary by container—good news for operators that can now treat news of increased surcharges with cold facts. In fact, we found that, depending on the size of the container, fees account anywhere between 2.86 and 3.33% of the total shipping cost—a number we will soon elaborate on.

To start we should note that, given the vastness of the ocean industry—and the lack of an aggregate dataset on shipping costs—we focused on a single route for this analysis: the transpacific line from Shanghai, China, to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico. This, in turn, is an expansion of our past analysis on the cost of Asia to Mexico shipping.

For this analysis, we considered 24 lanes from eleven ocean carriers: HMM, EMC, PIL, Yang Ming (YML), CMA CGM, ZIM, COSCO, MSC, OOCL, Maersk, and Wan Hai (WHL)—although, we should note that MSC, despite having a Shanghai to Lázaro Cárdenas route, did not report surcharge rates. For each of them, we considered seven fees which we outline below:

Automated Manifest System Fee (AMS): A fee charged per shipment by customs authorities. This fee is meant to cover the cost of managing manifest data for a specific shipment at port.
Verified Gross Mass Fee (VGM): A fee intended to cover the expenses of verifying the gross mass of a shipment before it is loaded into a vessel. This is a fee paid by container being handled.
Manifest Fee: A fee intended to cover the costs of submitting manifest data to customs authorities.
Peak Season Surcharge (PSS): This fee is meant to cover additional costs during peak shipping seasons—such as Chinese New Year or the weeks leading to the holiday season. This fee is charged by container and will differ based on container size.
International Ship and Port Facility Security Code Charge (ISPS): A fee charged by container meant to cover additional security at port—including security assessments and the development of security plans in case of an emergency. The value of this fee will change based on container size.
Value Protect Plus: More than a fee, this is a form of insurance offered by Maersk in case of any accidents on board such as a fire or potential cargo theft. This fee is charged by container.
Low Sulphur Surcharge (LSS): This is a fee per container being carried in a vessel using low sulphur fuels. It is meant to offset and discourage sulfur emissions. Much like the PSS or ISPS, this fee varies by the size of the container.

Not all charges listed were required by the eleven companies considered. In fact, we found that only three charges were shared across companies: VGM, Manifest Fee, and PSS—again, considering we found no surcharge or fee data for MSC. Value Protect Plus was a Maersk specific fee (which, we should add, serves more like an optional insurance). Similarly, LSS fees were only experienced by Wan Hai. In the table below, we share which carriers are charging which fees for the route considered.

Surcharges and Fees Charged by Carrier

Carrier	AMS	VGM	Manifest Fee	PSS	ISPS	Value Protect Plus	LSS
HMM	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
EMC	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
PIL	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
YML	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
CMA	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
ZIM	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
COSCO	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
MSC	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
OOCL	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
MAERSK	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌
WHL	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅

Average Value of Shipping Surcharges per Container

As the figure below shows. Fees and surcharges range from 35 USD per container to 2 USD per container. LSS and AMS were the most expensive with a cost per container of 35 and 33.6 USD respectively. The cheapest, in contrast, were the VGM at 2 USD per container and the Manifest Fee at 6.9 USD.

Average ISPS Charge by Container Type

As the figure shows, despite the fact that 20ft containers hold less cargo than 40ft containers, they actually have higher ISPS fees. While a 40ft container has an ISPS fee of 13 USD, a 20ft one has a fee of 13.89 USD—yet another reason why, when shipping large quantities, it might be cheaper to consider 40ft containers which carry double the cargo but only cost about 10% more.

Total Average Surcharges by Container Type

We also gathered the total shipping cost for all journeys considered in this study. This allowed us to graph the share of the cost of a trip represented by surcharges and fees.

While limited in scope, this initial analysis does suggest interesting patterns that logistics operators should take into consideration. Above all, it helps disprove the idea that surcharges are in large part responsible for fluctuations in prices as they often account for a small proportion in shipping prices—though this could well change in case of unforeseen disruptions like droughts in the Panama Canal or Houthi attacks on the Red Sea.

In Desteia, we believe companies should leverage information like the above to better understand their own supply chains and costs.