Optional fuel surcharge to support paper carriers

Thank you for reading Southern Maryland News. With your support, APG Media of Chesapeake has made tremendous progress the past several months in our mission to innovate, inspire and inform our community.

One significant challenge we face in fulfilling that mission, however, is our ability to contract and retain a stable newspaper delivery force. With today’s labor shortages, it has proven very difficult to find people willing to do one of the most challenging and under-appreciated jobs in existence.

The extremely high gas prices we are all paying right now has made this challenge even more difficult. These folks are not employees; they operate their own delivery business, and those businesses can’t produce a reliable profit when the cost of a core expense like fuel nearly doubles in a few months’ time.

The typical home delivery carrier needs to purchase five gallons of fuel per day. Costs for reaching our mailed subscribers have increased, too. In several of our markets, we contract with carriers who deliver bundles of mailed copies directly to local post offices so mail carriers can get the papers out the day of publication. Those contractors are struggling with these higher costs as well.

To counter this unfortunate circumstance, Southern Maryland News will be assessing a $1 monthly gas surcharge to all subscribers beginning in June. This surcharge will fund temporary rate increases with our current delivery force, and allow us to offer sign-on bonuses for new carriers.

You will not be invoiced separately for this charge; your subscription expiration date will simply be reduced by a day or two. If you truly do not want to support your carrier in this manner, please call the customer service team at 410-7704005 and we will exclude you.

I look forward to the day when I can write a follow-up piece here alerting you that fuel prices have declined to the point this surcharge can be removed. Until then, please know that we at APG Media of Chesapeake will never take for granted the support of readers like you that allow us to go to work each day to connect our communities.