United Parcel Service and FedEx may get some help from the weather and better coordination with online retailers as they move into the final days of a record Christmas shipping season.
The busiest day for UPS comes Tuesday, when the world’s largest package-delivery company projects volume of 36 million pieces, double its normal daily average. By Christmas Eve, UPS and FedEx project they will have handled almost 1 billion shipments for the holiday crush that began on Black Friday.
UPS and FedEx have had to impose shipping limits on some commercial customers, spokesmen said. This year, UPS has worked with retailers to submit orders on Saturdays instead of Mondays, letting the company process packages during the weekend and start moving them earlier.
About 93.2 percent of UPS ground shipments were on time the week of Dec. 6-12, the most recent figures available, according to Satish Jindel, president of logistics firm ShipMatrix. That compared with 96.5 percent for the same week a year earlier, he said. The on-time rate for UPS express shipments for the week of Dec. 13-19 was 96.4 percent, down from 97.9 percent.
FedEx Ground was on time 95.3 percent, up from 94.8 percent a year earlier. The rate for the company’s air shipments was 98.7 percent, compared with 97.6 percent, Jindel said. The differences with 2014 aren’t material, he said.
