EquaShip temporarily suspends operations

Earlier this month, Seattle-based EquaShip said it is temporarily suspending customer operations in order to re-engineer its transportation network for faster package delivery times, larger geographic coverage, and more service options.

The company, which launched in October, positioned itself as the new “fourth parcel carrier” and was primarily geared towards e-commerce sellers and small shippers. At the time of its launch EquaShip CEO Ron Wiener told LM that makes it stand out in a parcel duopoly spearheaded by industry bellwethers FedEx and UPS along with the United States Postal Serviceis the ability to offer small shippers price breaks that have historically only been available to large enterprise shippers.

“Our customers clearly loved that fact that our prices beat FedEx and UPS by up to 80 percent, our real insurance coverage bundled with every parcel, and our outstanding customer service,” Wiener said in a statement. “However, in today’s ecommerce environment it’s not good enough for small and medium-sized merchants to offer Free Shipping. Shipping also has to be fast enough to compete with larger competitors like Amazon who ship from multiple distribution centers. What we heard loud and clear from our customers was that they needed faster transit times than we could deliver through our existing network of transportation partners.”

And instead of limiting its market to shippers that could withstand slower transit times, Wiener said that the company elected to suspend operations now and switch out its transportation network providers before re-entering the market. When EquaShip does return, company officials said that it plans to expand service offerings with new options for same-day, expedited and international services, in addition to its keystone postal consolidation ground service.

EquaShip’s transportation partner over the past few months was Blue Package Delivery, a non-asset based parcel consolidator and carrier who contracts its deliveries through contracts with various regional carriers and delivers shipments and packages of all weights up to 70 pounds.