Fed UP - Dealing with Shipping companies in 2010

UPS and FedEx have both set their rates to increase by approximately 5% in January of 2010. It happens every year. Depending on how good your rep is you may or may not hear that much about it. Yet, it happens year after year and if you don't pay much attention, it can have a significant impact on your transportation revenue spend. If your company spends $50,000 per year on shipping and your rate increase is 5% that means that your shipping costs have increased by more than $200 per month!

UPS and FedEx are raising their rates again - do you have a plan?

Rob

Tags: 2010, ecommerce, shipping

0 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of 48Days.NET to add comments!

Join 48Days.NET

Comment by Kevin Metzger on January 4, 2010 at 8:35am: And I personally would highly recommend MailExpress over Mail Innovations and SmartPost as we are able to provide a better service. I too am a former UPSer by the way.

Comment by Rob Orr on January 4, 2010 at 5:46am: Kevin - thanks for commenting! Great call on the Mail Innovations, and Smart Post. Being a former UPSer those are both great options for someone who ships under 5 lbs regularly (I think that was the max weight). Those things are definitely superior. UPS also offers a service called 'UPS basic' which is a very very stripped down version of UPS ground without the restrictions regarding weight as well, but the volume requirements for that are astronomical.

In general shipping should be like officiating in sports. If it's working well you shouldn't even be able to tell that they're there.

There was so much more that I wanted to add to this post, but will save for future posts. There is just too much to talk about with this stuff.

Comment by Kevin Metzger on January 2, 2010 at 9:43pm: Guys, I couldn't let this conversation go by without adding commenting. In my FTJ- Full Time Job I work for a company that ships business to consumer. We are a pretty interesting company. We compete with a service called Smart Post from FedEx and a service from UPS called Mail Innovations. My company is called MailExpress. We pick up freight from the shipper ie. Best Buy and bring it to one of our hubs. We then sort the mail and send it to the closest post office for delivery to the end customer. We are generally able to provide faster service than typical USPS, we provide better tracking, and we are generally cheaper than first class mail. It is slower than a typical UPS or FedEx ground package but our service is generally faster than the Smartpost or Mail Innovation services. We are also trying hard to work with our customers and our customers, Customers to ensure they have a good shipping experience.

Comment by Rob Orr on December 29, 2009 at 9:14am: Thanks for the comment Theresa - carrier pigeons would be nice! The USPS has been trying for years to find ways of grabbing market-share from UPS and FedEx with little success. The USPS is a really good option for small things as long as you can track and don't have to deal with the local post office! UPS thinks they're doing you a favor, and FedEx just doesn't have the infrastructure that UPS does. With DHL now out of the picture, it leaves only these three to compete for your business.

Comment by Theresa on December 29, 2009 at 7:25am: Helpful info Rob. What makes this so pathetic is the fact that the USPS continues to decline in their service. (I marvel that they're still even in business every time I have to mail a package.)

I personally would like to start using carrier pigeons. Might be a little hard with packages though. ;)