DHL Express, the third-largest express carrier in the U.S. package competition, already had an 18 percent surcharge in effect for August. Its September fuel fee will be 19 percent.

All three major overnight parcel carriers that compete in the United States have now said they were hiking their air fuel surcharges by a full percentage point in September.

The two biggest express players in the U.S. package market, UPS and FedEx Express, both said they will push their fuel surcharges for overnight air parcels to 17 percent in September, from 16 percent now. (See story.)

The carriers listed the new fees in Web site updates. They had each held those rates steady from July to August, after jet fuel prices stabilized some from an earlier surge.

But as oil prices rose for much of the past month, jet fuel costs rose as well, pushing the fuel price indexes for all the carriers to another trigger level.

But while they were raising their surcharges based on aviation fuel, they left their ground shipment surcharges at the same levels they used in August as the cost of diesel that fuels most of their trucks did not show the same gains as jet fuel.

FedEx and UPS left their September ground shipment fuel fees at 4.75 percent. DHL held to its 4.8 percent ground fuel surcharge.

John D. Boyd