UPS & FedEx Limit Shipments During Holiday Season

Daniel Litwin
Dec 18, 2020
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Christmas shopping Costco Daniel Litwin Podcast Delivery FedEx fulfillment Holiday MarketScale Radio retail shipping Tyler Kern Podcast UPS USPS

 

With a shopping season like no other, eCommerce is booming, which means a tremendous strain on logistics and delivery. In an attempt to manage demand, UPS and FEDEX worked out plans with their biggest customers that set limits on daily pickups, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Should a shipper exceed this, the carriers must hit pause until they have the capacity to do so.

Hosts Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern looked at the impact of this on the entire ecosystem, including:

  • Alternatives for retailers, including Costco’s use of Instacart.
  • Delivery scores moving higher even with these strict shipping rules (2020 looks better than 2019 thus far with on-time scores of 94.9% for FedEx and 96.3% for UPS for the period of Nov. 22 – Dec. 5.).
  • Is the future of fulfillment internal? Will more large players build their own shipping and fulfillment infrastructure?

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