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Pitney Bowes hikes US, international e-commerce shipping rates

Company also launches same-day deliveries for under-50-pound shipments moving within a 50-mile radius

Pitney Bowes' results fall flat on Wall Street (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

E-commerce and parcel shipping provider Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) said Wednesday that it will impose a 5.9% tariff rate increase on first- and last-mile e-commerce deliveries in the U.S. and on cross-border delivery services to 207 countries and territories.

In addition, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company will apply a 4.9% tariff hike on U.S.-based reverse logistics services for product returns. All of the increases take effect Jan. 3, Pitney Bowes said.

The 5.9% domestic rate hike will apply to parcels weighing more than 1 pound, Pitney Bowes said. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is Pitney Bowes’ exclusive provider of last-mile delivery services for forward movements and first-mile pickups for returns shipments.

Separately, Pitney Bowes launched on Tuesday a same-day delivery service through its cloud-based transportation management system (TMS) known as SendPro Online. Under the door-to-door program, parcels will be delivered in under two hours within a 50-mile radius. The maximum weight of each parcel is 50 pounds. The company will use multiple carriers for the same-day service.


At the same time, Pitney Bowes began a service called SendPro Delivery Assurance, which offers Postal Service Priority Mail business customers a credit on their shipping charges should a shipment be delayed.

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.