Express Delivery

The current state of the business relationship between Memphis-based freight transportation and logistics services provider FedEx and the United States Postal Service (USPS) received a fair amount of attention on the former’s fiscal second quarter earnings call late last year.

The new edition of the TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index, which was recently released by New York-based investment firm Cowen Inc. and Shreveport, La.-based 3PL and freight audit and payment company AFS Logistics LLC, highlighted mixed readings, as well as expectations, for truckload, less-than-truckload (LTL), and parcel activity, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.

The slowdown in China’s economy, as well as U.S. e-commerce returning from its stratospheric heights in 2022 likely played a role in global parcel volumes slowing in 2022. According to data from global shipping and mailing company Pitney Bowes, global parcel volume reached 161 billion in 2022, a 1% increase from 2021.

This follows its Texas-based expansion plan, which was rolled out in August 2022, with a focus on what it called the “fast-growing megaregion of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, with the Dallas-Fort Worth facility to function as the major Texas-based sort hub, reaching 19 million new consumers through faster residential e-commerce delivery services.

As freight transportation, logistics, and supply chain stakeholders (likely) breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday, following the new five-year tentative agreement reached yesterday between Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, there has been no shortage of opinions and views on how this agreement, assuming it is ratified by UPS Teamsters members next month, will impact shippers, especially as it relates to pricing.

With only a few days remaining until the July 31 deadline, the contentious and on-again, off-again labor negotiations between Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reached an amicable outcome today, in the form of a new five-year tentative agreement.

The on-again, off-again tone of the ongoing, and fairly contentious, labor negotiation talks between Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) took a positive step. That step was UPS saying that it will return to the negotiating table next week.

The findings of the study, entitled “How Retailers Can Build Supply Chains That Thrive in the Post-Pandemic World,” were based on a partnership between OnTrac and Hanover Research through a survey of more than 150 C-Suite, VP, and director level supply chain professionals at large retailers, focusing on the challenges they are facing and how they plan to respond to those challenges, as well as key investment areas for them.

Total U.S. logistics costs soared to $2.3 trillion last year, growing 19.6% from 2022 and now representing 9.1% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the newest State of Logistics report.