Since 2014, Amazon has gone from 0% to 28% of package delivery.
Parcel Shipping 2024
Please consider the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index Report for 2024.
Competitive pricing is intensifying and alternatives are emerging.
To capture a larger market share, carriers are increasingly offering competitive pricing, which is leading to lower revenue per parcel. In fact, revenue per parcel dropped 0.6% in 2024, to $9.09, down from $9.10 in 2023. This pricing pressure is largely driven by the rapid growth of alternative carriers, as well as USPS’ new low-cost shipping option, Ground Advantage. This service has helped USPS grow for the first time since 2020, reaching 6.9 billion parcels in 2024, up from 6.6 billion in 2023.
The Rise of Amazon
Since we began tracking shipments in 2015, the parcel market had been dominated by the Big 3: FedEx, UPS, and USPS. However, Amazon Logistics—once a small competitor—is closing the gap rapidly. In 2024, Amazon handled 6.3 billion parcels, just behind USPS’ 6.9 billion.
By 2028, Amazon is projected to overtake USPS, with 8.4 billion parcels versus USPS’ 8.3 billion. The “others” category comprised of smaller carriers continued growth trajectory and experienced their combined volume grow 22.6%.
This trend indicated a long-term transformation in the economics of last-mile delivery, favoring smaller packages and more affordable shipping options.
Tariff Impact
The newly imposed tariffs are still being fully understood, but they’re expected to affect carrier cross-border shipping costs and disrupt supply chains. with longer delivery times for international shipments.
Disruption presents opportunities for new carriers. New final-mile and regionally-specialized carriers could capitalize on the growing demand for localized, cost-effective shipping solutions in markets where the larger international carriers may struggle to offer affordable services.
UPS to Lay Off 20,000 Workers, Close over 70 Facilities
Please note UPS to Lay Off 20,000 Workers, Close over 70 Facilities
UPS has announced plans to cut 20,000 jobs and close more than 70 facilities as it looks to reduce the volume it delivers for Amazon by more than 50% by June.
“The first phase of our network reconfiguration includes 164 operational closures, including 73 building closures by the end of June of this year,” the firm’s CFO Brian Dykes said.
Dykes also said position changes are not only connected to the buildings it is closing but will also be made across the entire U.S. network.
“Our planned reductions are in line with the total Amazon volume decline,” he said.
Dykes said associated with this volume reduction, UPS is undertaking the largest network reconfiguration in our history.
During UPS’ fourth-quarter earnings conference call in January, CEO Carol Tomé said the company had partnered with Amazon for almost 30 years and that when its contract came up this year, UPS decided to reassess the relationship.
“Amazon is our largest customer but it’s not our most profitable customer,” Tomé said at the time. “Its margin is very dilutive to the U.S. domestic business.”
UPS Cannot Compete with Amazon on Price
Margin is “very dilutive to the U.S. domestic business,” says UPS CEO.
Q: And why is that?
A: USP accepted a Teamster’s Union Contract that USP Could not afford.
CNN report UPS is Cutting 20,000 Jobs. It’s Not What You Think.
Actually, it is exactly what I thought, in advance.
UPS in January announced a “glide down” plan to cut its business with Amazon, its largest customer, in half by the middle of 2026. UPS CEO Carol Tome said Tuesday that most of the Amazon business that it is giving up is “not profitable for us, nor a healthy fit for our network.”
UPS also said it expects to use more automation in its facilities, from sorting packages to label application to loading and unloading trucks, with 400 facilities becoming partly if not fully automated.
The Teamsters union, which represents more than 300,000 UPS hourly workers, said it would fight layoffs of any of its members.
“If UPS wants to continue to downsize corporate management, the Teamsters won’t stand in its way,” said the union’s president, Sean O’Brien. “But if the company intends to violate our contract or makes any attempt to go after hard-fought, good-paying Teamsters jobs, UPS will be in for a hell of a fight.”
If that’s the case, look forward to a UPS bankruptcy.
Common Dreams Blames Greed
If you want to read leftist BS (to which now Trump subscribes), please consider Laid Off UPS Workers Hides Key Factor: Stock Buybacks and Wall Street Greed
UPS, like every major U.S. corporation, is in business to extract as much wealth as possible and shovel it to its shareholders and top executives in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. And like every major corporation, UPS will pay for that wealth extraction by laying off as many workers as possible. That may reduce the production of goods and services, but so be it, if it generates more money for shareholders and executives. In big business today, wealth extraction always comes first.
Let’s look at some of UPS’s numbers. In 2023, the company authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, starting in 2024 with $500 million and another $5.5 billion in dividends. In 2025, UPS plans to spend another $1 billion on stock buybacks, as well as $5.5 billion more in dividends. In 2024, not incidentally, UPS posted $8.5 billion in profits. This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.
In the last 10 years, UPS went from nearly 40 percent of market share to 21 percent.
Common Dreams’ clowns don’t understand why.
Sean O’Brien and the UPS Layoffs
The Wall Street Journal comments on Sean O’Brien and the UPS Layoffs
President Trump is pressing CEOs to announce new U.S. investments, but has he spoken with his friend Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters boss? United Parcel Service on Tuesday announced 20,000 job cuts and 73 facility closures this year in no small part thanks to Mr. O’Brien.
Last year UPS announced 12,000 job cuts, mostly in management, owing to falling package volumes and rising labor costs from its 2023 Teamsters agreement. That contract raised average compensation for full-time drivers to $170,000 from $145,000 over five years. Teamsters at UPS get up to seven weeks of vacation and don’t pay healthcare premiums.
But fewer workers will now get this as UPS’s rising labor costs have forced cutbacks and prompted more automation at sorting centers. Mr. O’Brien on Tuesday said UPS “is contractually obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under our current national master agreement.” He’s misleading his members.
A Teamsters summary of the agreement says “UPS will offer part-time employees the opportunity to fill at least 22,500 permanent full-time job openings throughout its operations covered by this agreement,” which “shall include the obligation to create at least 7,500 new full-time jobs from existing part-time jobs” in the last three years of the agreement.
In other words, UPS agreed to make some part-time jobs full-time and give part-time employees a chance to fill some full-time openings. But the rich labor agreement Mr. O’Brien struck is now pricing workers out of jobs. It’s not the first time. His militancy helped drive trucking firm Yellow Corp. into bankruptcy in 2023, costing some 22,000 Teamsters their jobs.
Mr. Trump named Teamsters favorite Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor secretary in return for Mr. O’Brien’s non-endorsement last year. At least the union chief has protected one job.
UPS Slashes Jobs, Losing Business to Amazon, What’s Going On?
On February 5, I commented UPS Slashes Jobs, Losing Business to Amazon, What’s Going On?
Am I the only one who thinks driving a truck and making deliveries is not worth $170,000?
But that is the contract, forced by the idea of “collective bargaining”.
There are about 330,000 UPS driving jobs are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
There are about 335 million people in the US who pay more for deliveries than they should.
In Praise of Amazon
As one of the 335 million, I endorse Amazon’s decision exit business and do their own deliveries.
Common Dreams and the average union clown blames management instead of ludicrous $170,000 contracts with five weeks off to deliver packages.
The lead chart tells the story.
I praise Amazon. So do 335 million thinking customers who get package deliveries.
Trump Got in Bed With Teamsters
This is the result.
In case you missed it, please note Trump’s Nauseating Pick for Labor Secretary Is the Teacher’s Union Favorite
She was confirmed.
Meanwhile, please note Consumers Face End of De Minimis Tariff Exemptions on $800 Packages
The trade provision that allows consumers and resellers to avoid duties on shipments worth $800 or less is ending for products made in China.
Hooray!? 40% to 100% Higher Prices
Who wants that? (Exclusions for cultist parrots who cannot think).
The idea we are going to bring shoe or clothes manufacturing back to the US (or that we would like the price result if we did) is of course ludicrous.
Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again
On April 14, I commented Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again in Pictures
The share of manufacturing employment keeps declining. What role did NAFTA play?
A Trump Cult member gave the expected 5D nonsensical counter.
“The game is not about making shoes in the US. It is much a much bigger game about power and preventing a debt spiral in the US. Trump or Bessent needs to go on Rogan to explain this,” said a cult member on my blog.
But exactly how does making everyone in the US pay more for clothes, shoes lawn mowers etc., prevent a debt spiral in the US?
Excuse me for pointing out Congress controls the debt and the fed the overnight lending rate.
And speaking of debt, the bond market is increasingly likely to revolt over Trump’s proposed budget.