BrownCafe
FedEx and UPS say packages during a record-setting holiday season are shipping without a hitch.
FedEx has said the last four Mondays before Christmas would likely be among the busiest days in the company’s history, thanks to the continued growth in online shopping.
UPS said Wednesday the holiday season is going according to plan. The company will deliver an estimated 30 million packages per day during the week of Dec. 19, nearly double its normal daily volume.
A new UPS delivery trike in Portland, Oregon, pedaled by a driver with help from an electric motor, can only hold a tenth of the packages as a standard-size truck. But because the tiny trike doesn’t get stuck in traffic, it (alongside a standard fleet of trucks) can help the company become more efficient in a crowded urban neighborhood.
“With a full-size delivery vehicle, you can’t get it into places that you would with an e-bike,” says Scott Phillippi, an automotive engineer at UPS. “It’s part of an overall strategy to make an impact on the environment as well as become more efficient in doing so.”
Dear Mother Nature,
Some of us just got around to ordering our presents. You mind maybe holding off on the white stuff for a couple of days until they get where they are going?
Maybe we’re fretting needlessly about the holiday gifts. The folks who deliver the goodies say they have it under control.
United Parcel Service has a team of five meteorologists keeping up with the latest weather. If there is a storm that might affect deliveries, the weather people talk with UPS’s contingency team and reroute packages.
Some of us just got around to ordering our presents. You mind maybe holding off on the white stuff for a couple of days until they get where they are going?
Maybe we’re fretting needlessly about the holiday gifts. The folks who deliver the goodies say they have it under control.
United Parcel Service has a team of five meteorologists keeping up with the latest weather. If there is a storm that might affect deliveries, the weather people talk with UPS’s contingency team and reroute packages.
Online retail sales are expected to reach $392.5 billion this year, according to research firm eMarketer, but with U.S. consumers now demanding free shipping on most packages, shippers and retailers are facing a squeeze.
Shippers’ margins are falling or stagnating, despite steady price increases, because homes are roughly three times as expensive to deliver to as business addresses. And retailers cannot pass along the cost, because they must offer free shipping in order to compete.
The shared solution: design new, space-saving packages that can help improve package density on delivery trucks. This cuts costs for retailers and raises margins for shippers.