Why do you charge extra for rush orders?

I have always felt apologetic about asking customers who come at the last moment asking if I can complete their order quickly.  I have always tried to accommodate such orders, without any additional compensation, not realizing the havoc this causes me and my business.

Recently, I have been tightening up the processes so that we can produce our scanning services on time, high quality, at an affordable price, sensitive to the needs of our customers, and respectful of the lives of the people doing the work.  Rush orders were brought up to me as a disruptive force to accomplishing these goals.

So, I posted the following query to Google to see what the world had to say about this issue:

Google:  ​"how much should I charge for a rush order?"

One of the top results was this article which made a lot of sense to me.  Since I want to stick to the estimates I give people who have already placed orders with us, to squeeze in a rush order, I am going to have to ask one of our existing workers to spend extra time working in order to accommodate the rush order.  The normal rate for such work is time and a half.  Since our rate per scanned item reflects the amount of time we spend using our equipment to scan the item, it thus seems perfectly reasonable to charge 1.5 times our normal rate, including our minimum order size, which is currently $60 for the scanning part of an order. 

So, if you want your order sooner than the current backlog of work, then we will charge your 1.5 times our normal rates, which make our current minimum order size $90.

To understand why I have come to this conclusion, please read the following article: