The Ample Evidence Behind a Christmas Shipping Surge

[cheryl]

The Ample Evidence Behind a Christmas Shipping Surge - Bloomberg Businessweek

The wave of e-commerce that swamped FedEx and United Parcel Service just before Christmas day may have been unprecedented, but it should not have come as a huge surprise.

U.S. consumers offered plenty of hints in recent weeks that they were keen to shop from their couches. Store traffic and spending on and around the Thanksgiving holiday was dismal by many measures. But online shopping on “Cyber Monday” surged 21 percent over 2012 levels, according to IBM.

On a mass scale, that trend should have been evident to any economist or supply-chain consultant willing to zoom out from anecdotal reports and semi-scientific surveys.

 

[Brown Dog]

Good point. Hard to imagine pencil pushers couldn't have foreseen more than their 12% projected increase over last year. With over a Billion dollar profit last quarter, it wiil be interesting to see how the next quarter compares. Usually the biggest profit quarter. Maybe, despite all the missed packages, understaffing, and overwhelming work, UPS still profited greatly. Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[oldngray]

Good point. Hard to imagine pencil pushers couldn't have foreseen more than their 12% projected increase over last year. With over a Billion dollar profit last quarter, it wiil be interesting to see how the next quarter compares. Usually the biggest profit quarter. Maybe, despite all the missed packages, understaffing, and overwhelming work, UPS still profited greatly. Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing.

Christmas used to be the busiest time for UPS .. but the poorest performing quarter. Because of all of the extra costs to get so many packages delivered. Now UPS just takes the money and doesn't worry about when the packages get delivered, so increased profits.