Surcharges

Every day, our trucks run on diesel to collect, transport and recycle your liquid waste, and at today’s prices that is a significant cost. The Energy Surcharge keeps our base rates steady, so only the fuel portion of your invoice moves, up or down, with the price of diesel. The Energy Surcharge is a percentage, the energy rate, applied to your invoice subtotal, and it appears as its own line on your invoice. The energy rate is tied to the EIA’s national average weekly diesel price,  a public, independent benchmark widely recognized in the trucking and transportation industries that you can check at any time.

The rate adjusts every week, up or down: when diesel prices fall, your surcharge falls automatically, with no request needed. The surcharge is applied company-wide and is not based on the specific cost of servicing your individual account.

The energy rate is the percentage listed in the Energy Surcharge Schedule for the most recently published national average diesel price. It is not calculated from the fuel used to service any specific location or customer.

Energy Surcharge = invoice subtotal × energy rate

• No surcharge until diesel tops $3.50 a gallon: fuel costs up to that level are already built into your base rate, and when diesel falls back to $3.50 or below, the Energy Surcharge comes off your invoice entirely.
• Diesel above $3.50 per gallon: the energy rate rises about 5.4 percentage points for every $1.00 that diesel moves.
• Example: with diesel at $6.00 per gallon, the standard energy rate is 15.892%. On a $1,000 invoice subtotal, the Energy Surcharge is $158.92.
• Timing: the energy rate updates every week. For accounts on our compliance program (Auto Charge), it is set once a month, using the first national average diesel price EIA publishes that month.

The Environmental Surcharge helps cover the cost of sustainable trucking and disposal practices, even when they are not the lowest-cost option. For example, we may send your wastewater to a disposal site that recycles and recovers as much of the byproduct as possible to maximize landfill diversion, rather than to a site that only recycles the water.

The Environmental Surcharge is a fixed percentage applied to your invoice subtotal, and it appears as its own line on your invoice.

Depending on your location, services and agreement, your invoice may also include other charges, fees and surcharges. These may be fixed amounts, fixed percentages, or amounts or percentages that vary. They include:

• Regulatory and municipal surcharges: charges that result from the requirements of a regulatory agency or municipality where your service is performed.
• Franchise fees: fees that apply where a municipality grants a franchise for waste services within its jurisdiction.
• Manifest and administrative fee: a recurring fee that helps us recover the cost of distributing manifests to government agencies, retaining manifests, and administering your account, including purchase order application, portal fees, invoicing and technology. It includes an amount designed to achieve an acceptable operating margin and is not mandated by or remitted to any governmental or regulatory agency.
• Taxes: as required by law.

These charges may change. Where your service terms require it, we give advance notice, which may be a message on your invoice.