Taming peak season:
BY TOBY GOOLEY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
PARCEL EXPRESS
Transportation Report
FOR PARCEL SHIPPERS AND CARRIERS ALIKE, THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS
a grueling stress test. Many retailers ship the majority of their orders in the last
two months of the year, ramping up daily volumes and straining carriers’ capacity.
Order volumes spike and backlogs develop, causing Aunt Nelly’s sweater or Timmy’s
chemistry kit to arrive sometime after Christmas.
By all accounts, the number of late holiday deliveries directly relates to the extraordinary growth of e-commerce orders, most of which move via the parcel carriers
FedEx and UPS and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Since late 2013, when a sharp
spike in e-commerce shipments caught them off-guard, parcel carriers have taken
steps to better prepare themselves for holiday traffic. Depending on the carrier, these
have included requiring shippers to provide more detailed forecasts; hiring tens of
thousands of temporary workers; expanding weekend and evening service; adding
more trucks, planes, and warehouse capacity; modifying shipment routing; limiting the number of parcels they accept immediately before Christmas; and levying
peak-season surcharges to help cover those additional costs.
Still, e-commerce parcel volumes continue to exceed forecasts, and evidence
suggests that carriers are still struggling to keep up. Sixty-one percent of consumers
polled for shipping technology specialist Pitney Bowes’ 2018 Global eCommerce
Despite everyone’s best
efforts, late parcel
deliveries seem to be
a fact of life during
the holiday shipping
season. But there are
some steps shippers can
take to boost the odds
that their packages will
arrive as planned.
Taming peak season:
It’s all about prevention
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