Surge in Online Ordering Has Package Delivery Firms Hopping
A surge in online holiday shopping has national package delivery companies gearing up for record shipping days heading into Christmas and Hanukkah.
“FedEx anticipates another record peak holiday shipping season, with each of the four Mondays during the season expected to be among the busiest in our company’s history.” said Rae Lyn Rushing, a spokeswoman for FedEx. “The rapid growth of e-commerce has driven significant shifts in demand over the last several years, and we are confident we are prepared to deliver another successful holiday.”
FedEx ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
As online shopping has continued to climb nationwide this year, industry analysts say major shipping companies are feeling more and more pressure to deliver.
“Ever since the beginning of the year, it’s been accelerating,” said Chris Christopher, a retail analyst with IHS Global Insight. “This is putting pressure on the parcel delivery services, to make sure they get their act together.”
And though online purchases are fueling the increased load for shipping companies, Christopher said mobile buying — where shoppers buy one or two items at a time instead of filling up their online cart — is adding a lot of packages to the pile.
In 2013, both FedEx and UPS came under fire after many packages arrived too late for the holidays. But so far this year, both companies have delivered the majority of their packages on time.
This week in the Bay State, FedEx has delivered 98.5% of its packages on time and UPS has successfully delivered 94.5%, according to data from shipping software provider ShipMatrix. But more than 99% of packages are arriving less than one day late, according to ShipMatrix President Satish Jindel.
UPS ranks No. 1 on the for-hire TT100.
“No one is not going to have their Christmas present unless they waited until the day before,” Jindel said.
FedEx and UPS have reportedly been shifting hundreds of employees to unexpected hotspots in preparation for the surge, Jindel said.
“During peak, new people place orders online, that creates a new challenge of not knowing where these packages are going to be delivered,” he said. “You’ve got to have the bodies where the packages are.”
