Farmgirl Flowers Founder Christina Stembel Says Fuel Cost Her $2 Million More This Year as Web Traffic Fell 21%. FedEx’s Ground Surcharge for $3.85 Diesel Has More Than Doubled Since 2021

Christina Stembel built Farmgirl Flowers without outside investors, and she says that lets her share numbers other founders can’t. On Bloomberg Businessweek on Oct. 26, she said the company is “just running a flat year” at “34, 35 million dollars” in revenue, squeezed by two things at once: AI search tools that cut its web traffic, and the fuel surcharges FedEx, UPS and regional carriers add to every box it ships.

“We’re not gonna be very profitable,” she said. Farmgirl is “just trying to break even,” because it is spending $2 million more on fuel this year while its web traffic is down 21% from a year ago. By her own figures, $2 million is close to 6% of a year’s revenue.

She can’t pass it all on. Farmgirl charges customers $25 for shipping, which she said focus groups showed is the most it can charge, while “we pay, you know, $34 to $36 for shipping a box.” The company has raised its flower prices twice. She called the higher fuel charges understandable, since the carriers can’t absorb rising fuel prices either. What she wants is to see what the charge covers.

She wants rules like the ones railroads face, “so a surcharge is actually just a surcharge and not a moneymaker,” and she was careful about what she could prove: “they might be running it that way, I just don’t know because you don’t see it.” The carriers’ own published tables are the closest thing to a look inside.

How the Surcharge Works

FedEx and UPS set their ground fuel surcharges every Monday from the U.S. average diesel price the Energy Information Administration reported the week before. The surcharge is a percentage added to the shipping rate and to many add-on fees, and each carrier publishes a table that maps diesel prices to percentages.

Diesel explains a lot of this year’s pain. The EIA’s weekly average hit a record $6.53 a gallon on Sept. 21, the highest in data going back to 1994, and stood at $6.35 on Oct. 26, up 83% from $3.48 on Jan. 5. For the week of Oct. 26, FedEx charged 29.00% on Ground shipments and UPS 29.50%. Plugging the Oct. 26 diesel price into each carrier’s table gives 29.25% at FedEx and 30.25% at UPS for the week of Nov. 2.

Same Diesel, Higher Surcharge

The tables themselves have changed, too. Archived copies of FedEx’s surcharge pages show at least 10 different FedEx Ground tables since 2015, six of them since June 2021. Each table we found charged more than the one before it at the same diesel price. With diesel between $3.82 and $3.91 a gallon, FedEx’s June 2021 table charged 10.75%. The April 2022 table charged 14.25%, the December 2025 table 22.25%, and the table FedEx has used since June 1, 2026, charges 24.25%, 2.26 times the 2021 rate.

The 2026 figure comes from the rule FedEx prints under its current table, and that rule reproduces every weekly FedEx Ground surcharge from July 27 through Oct. 26. Go back further and the gap widens: in FedEx’s November 2015 table, diesel between $3.73 and $3.82 carried a 7.75% surcharge.

Farmgirl Flowers, by Stembel’s numbers, and the surcharge

Is It a Profit Center?

FedEx doesn’t report how much it collects in fuel surcharges against what it spends on fuel, so the answer to Stembel’s question isn’t public. Its annual report for the year ended May 31 says it routinely reviews its fuel surcharges and periodically updates the tables, and that fuel surcharges are “one of the many individual components of our pricing structure.” Fuel expense rose 7% that year, which FedEx put down mainly to higher fuel prices.

The surcharge is also a percentage of the shipping rate, not a fixed cost per gallon. When base rates rise, the fuel charge in dollars rises with them, even if diesel doesn’t move. It is one reason Stembel wants carriers to show the math, the way she says railroads have to.

UPS’s New Table

UPS set a new Ground table to start Nov. 2. Under the table it used through Nov. 1, every 9 cents of diesel above $4.99 added a quarter point; the new one moves that breakpoint to $5.80 and raises the percentages. At the Oct. 26 diesel price, it adds half a point. If diesel fell back to $3.85, the new table would charge 26.75%, two points more than the old one.

That design matters for shippers like Stembel. Below $5.80, the surcharge now drops a quarter point only for every 27 cents diesel falls, so it would come down slowly if fuel eases. Higher fuel costs travel the same way through the rest of the economy, from diesel prices to grocery bills, and a former United CEO has said fuel costs leave airlines no choice but to raise fares.

What to Watch

Stembel said one of her two big carriers is working with Farmgirl much more than the other, and that she may move more of its volume there soon. She is also fighting the traffic drop: she said she spends four to six hours a day writing for AI bots, and that the $350,000 Farmgirl saved by not hiring more engineers is small next to the sales it has lost. She is not alone in passing costs on: an NFIB survey found 31% of small-business owners had raised prices.

For shippers, the numbers to watch are the EIA’s Monday diesel price, which sets the next week’s surcharge, and whether FedEx matches UPS with a new table of its own. All diesel prices here are as of Oct. 26.