According to one observer, Amazon had to hand about one million parcels to UPS and the US Postal Service (USPS) in order to meet delivery windows.
After the first week of December, it seems the large parcel carriers encountered no serious problems in meeting their delivery commitments; eBay informed its sellers that the carrier networks were mostly in good shape and managing peak volumes effectively, despite some minor delays
Consultant ShipMatrix tabled numbers showing that the big three players – FedEx, UPS and USPS – had, in fact, improved their on-time performance over the 2021 peak season.
Between 1 and 23 November, the day before Thanksgiving, the three delivered 85 million parcels a day, on average. UPS clocked up an on-time delivery rate of 97%, FedEx 96.3% and USPS 96.2%.
From 24 through 30 November, when average daily parcels rose to 90m, the on-time delivery scores were 96.6% for UPS, 95.8% for USPS and 95.3% for FedEx.
For the same period in 2021, their respective performance numbers were 96.1%, 95.5% and 83.9%.
“This year, with capacity in excess of demand, the industry collectively has reached pre-pandemic levels,” said ShipMatrix president Satish Jindel.
He noted, however, that Amazon was having issues with two-day delivery and had handed some traffic to UPS in order to cope.