Word on the Street weekly winner and Sunsafe Australia Director, Ben alerted Oliver Peterson and Perth Live listeners of the crazy 40% road freight surcharge for parcels coming in or out of WA.

With a busy Christmas period approaching, the increased charge has sent many businesses into a twist and left customers worried that their packages won’t arrive in time.

“I found out on Thursday after I had a Startrack inquiry – so my general inquiry was sorted and that’s when the rep said at that point from Monday ‘such and such,’ so I only found out by chance,” Ben told Oly.

“We spent the weekend trying to get the last 200 orders out that came in from Friday night to Sunday night just so we knew what those prices were at that point and got them out the door.”

Press PLAY to hear Ben share how he found out about the news

Deanna Foster, owner of Pretty Little Designs told Oly she has had to cancel her Australia Post contract due to the exploding costs.

“It’s an absolute blow to our business, we also found out by pure chance – just in passing with lots of emails to my account manager, he just called late on Thursday night and said by the way this is happening effective 28th of November, giving us absolutely no time to prepare,” Ms Foster told Oly.

“We don’t make any money on freight, most of the time we lose money on it – we are now stuck with trying to find a new freight company.”

Press PLAY to hear Deanna’s experience

Oly spoke to Cam Dumesney, CEO Of Western Roads Federation to discuss the ongoing rail disruptions caused by the NSW floods and issues with airfreight capacity have combined to prompt the surcharge.

Mr Dumesney told Oly that they received the news at the same time as everybody else, catching them off guard too.

“There has been a disruption two or three weeks ago with flooding in NSW that cut the Sydney to Perth freight line and then a derailment in Victoria which cut the Melbourne to Perth rail line,” he told Oly.

“But the blunt reality is we do not have enough truck drivers and we don’t have enough equipment. We have a strong mining industry, we’ve got a bumper harvest going on, we got big civil construction projects but simply not enough trucks around. Our diesel prices are up every year and I feel for those small business owners.”

Press PLAY to hear the full update on this situation

Attached below is a message from the Australia post account manager.