Is there a fuel surcharge on airport limo fares?

Five vehicles carry it, the Sedan does not

There is no fuel surcharge on any class. A fare is the base or minimum fare, the airport pickup fee where one applies, any extra-stop fee, then 13% HST and the 2% card fee calculated on top. The SUV, Premium SUV, Premium Sedan, Sprinter Van and Stretch Limousine are priced exactly the same way as the Sedan — no fuel line on a 9 km hop and none on a 270 km run to Kingston alike.

Follow an SUV drop-off inside the minimum-fare radius to see how short the arithmetic is. The base is the $135 minimum. HST adds $17.55 for $152.55, and the card fee adds $3.05. The quote reads $155.60.

The same trip in a Sedan runs its $85 base through tax and the card fee the same way, and finishes at $97.97. Of the $57.63 between those two totals, none of it is a surcharge of any kind; it is simply the distance between an $85 minimum and a $135 one, with the tax and card fee calculated on top.

• Sedan — no at any distance
• SUV, Premium SUV, Premium Sedan, Sprinter Van, Stretch — no fuel surcharge either
• Applied before HST and the card fee, never after
• SUV at its minimum: no fuel line inside its $155.60 total

What the Sedan exemption is actually worth

Because the surcharge sits at the bottom of the stack, removing it shrinks everything calculated above it too. A Sedan base turns into 1.325 times itself on the final bill; every other class turns into 1.383 times itself. The gap is about 4.4% of the finished fare.

On short trips a percentage surcharge would be small money — a few dollars inside a minimum fare. On long ones it would compound into something you would notice, which is why it matters that there is none here. The Kitchener drop-off base of $172.91 carries nothing under that heading and settles at $199.30 with HST and the card fee only. On the 271.4 km run to Kingston, where the Sedan base is far larger, the saving is proportionally the same on a much bigger number.

It also means the Sedan is the only vehicle where the advertised per-kilometre rate and the finished fare stand in the simplest possible relationship. If you are pricing several classes against each other, expect the Sedan to widen its lead slightly as distance grows.

A fixed percentage, not a moving index

Freight carriers, couriers and some charter operators run fuel surcharges that float — republished weekly or monthly against a diesel benchmark, so the number you were quoted in March is not the number you are billed in June. That is not what is happening here. There is no fuel surcharge in the rate card at all, fixed or floating — the fare is quoted whole and locked when you book.

Nothing on the day can move it either. A closed ramp that adds fifteen minutes of idling, a detour around a collision on the 401, a colder morning that costs the engine efficiency — none of it reprices the ride, because the surcharge is a percentage of a base fare that was set by distance and vehicle before you left home.

The one thing that can change the fare is a change to the trip itself. Add a stop and the detour's kilometres reprice the route, so the base grows and the HST and card fee calculated on it grow with it. That mechanic is worked through on the extra stop cost page.

• No fuel surcharge at all — nothing indexed to pump or diesel prices
• Locked at booking, with the rest of the quote
• Idling, detours and weather do not reprice it
• Only a changed route changes the base it is calculated on

Real routes with no fuel line

Grimsby sits 78.85 km out, past every vehicle's minimum. An SUV drop-off there prices at $2.65 per km for a base of $208.95, which runs through HST and the card fee only on the way to its $240.84 total. The Sedan on the same road is priced the same way and finishes at $179.95 — the gap is the per-kilometre rate, nothing else.

At the other end of the fleet, a Sprinter Van resting on its $355 minimum goes to $409.17 as a drop-off — the minimum, 13% HST and the 2% card fee, nothing else, and the same arithmetic it would follow on a Sprinter run to Peterborough. Airport pickups add the pickup fee to the base before the tax and card fee run, so on a pickup those two percentages apply to the fee as well — and that is the whole of what gets added to it. There is no fuel line on the fee, on the minimum or anywhere in between.

Whatever class you are pricing, there is no surcharge to go looking for. Ask the quote at /ride/ for your route and the single figure it returns is the whole of what you will be charged.