Shipping
October 24, 2018 at 11:11 am
Target for the first time ever will offer free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase required this holiday season. The move comes as Target bids to win shoppers over rivals Walmart and Amazon.com. The retailer said Tuesday that starting Nov. 1 and running through Dec. 22, "hundreds of thousands of items" will be eligible for free, two-day…
October 23, 2018 at 10:34 am
Walmart is expanding two-day shipping and in-store returns to many items sold by third parties on its website next month, just ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. For the past two years, Walmart has offered free two-day shipping on millions of items on its site without a membership fee, on orders of $35 or more.…
October 22, 2018 at 1:58 pm
The proposed increase in shipping and mailing fees at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) could cost Amazon.com more than $1 billion in 2019, according to a Credit Suisse report. "As we roll forward the sensitivity analysis to 2019, we arrive at a potential incremental shipping expense range of $400 million to $1.1 billion, with the assumption that 40…
October 12, 2018 at 11:37 am
The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a 9 percent to 12 percent increase in fees for its parcel select service, which is used by Amazon.com and many other retailers, as well as United Parcel Service and FedEx. The service is the last and typically most expensive step in the shipping process that gets packages to customers’ doorsteps. The…
October 10, 2018 at 12:48 pm
As most of the industry is aware, the most recent five-year UPS/Teamsters National Labor Agreement expired in July. However, the parties extended and have been operating under the same agreement as they negotiated a settlement. In July, UPS and the Teamsters announced they had reached a tentative “handshake” deal for both Freight (LTL) as well…
September 26, 2018 at 4:12 pm
As part of an ongoing $1.2 billion supply chain upgrade, Home Depot has started same-day delivery across the U.S. The home improvement retailer had already been using trucks to deliver large items such as building materials from stores in a day or so. Now, aided by startups Roadie Inc. and Deliv Inc. in its top 35…
September 21, 2018 at 9:32 am
In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Caitlin Sullivan and Joe Keenan discuss FedEx's recent rate hike and how increased shipping costs will affect retailers now and heading into the 2018 holiday season. In a double whammy for retailers, not only will it cost them more to ship their online orders with FedEx,…
September 13, 2018 at 3:39 pm
On Monday, FedEx modified its Express and Ground fuel surcharge rates, and created new indexes for International Export and Imports. These changes mean significant rate increases for nearly all FedEx shippers. Shippers shouldn't confuse this rate change with the weekly, normal fluctuation in fuel surcharge percentages based on market prices (as published by the Department…
September 13, 2018 at 11:29 am
Consumers today are well-versed in the art of online shopping, and no demographic knows this better than Generation Z (those born between 1996 to 2010). These digitally savvy youths are challenging retailers to rethink customer experience (CX), and will withhold or increase spend depending on its outcome. Shipping, as a key facet of the online…
September 7, 2018 at 12:37 pm
Walmart announced earlier this week a new last-mile delivery pilot program, called Spark Delivery, which focuses on fulfilling customers’ online grocery orders. The retailer is working with delivery logistics platform Bringg, a company that offers an Uber- or Amazon-like level of visibility to retailers’ delivery operations. Also similar to Uber, Walmart’s Spark delivery program relies on…
