UPS, overwhelmed by online orders, warns of delivery delays

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

Oh dear. There is always (at least) one. This year it’s UPS’s turn to battle the holiday surge in e-commerce volumes. It seems that despite 95,000 extra workers, it is not meeting delivery targets and is adding a day or two to transit times. This is the first year UPS has added surcharges during peak periods, but that does not appear to have dented demand, and it has told some workers that it might raise the number of hours drivers work to 70, over eight days, rather than 60 in seven days. This has not gone down very well with the Teamsters union. According to third-party data, UPS has shipped 89.2% of parcels on time, compared with 99.4% shipped by FedEx.