Second peak shipping week hits snag as Mother Nature intervenes

· Wednesday, December 11, 2019

May take a little longer (Photo:UPS)

The second week of the peak holiday shipping season, which included the Cyber Monday online buying bonanza, didn’t go as well as the first. Inclement weather in parts of the country played the delivery Grinch, according to data from consultancy ShipMatrix released Dec. 11.

UPS Inc.’s (NYSE:UPS) on-time performance came in at 92.7%, FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX) at 90.4%, the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) at 92.3%, and Amazon.com. Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) at 93.7%, ShipMatrix said. Last-mile deliveries accounted for the bulk of the Amazon reading.

The results were substantially below the first week’s results, which saw the four main parcel carriers effectively hit it out of the on-time delivery park.

Deliveries in and around New England suffered the most, as heavy snowfall resulted in about 20% of residents not receiving their packages when they had been promised, according to ShipMatrix data.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.