Category: Industry News

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a United Parcel Service Inc. appeal that aimed to force the U.S. Postal Service to raise its prices for delivering packages.

The justices, without comment Monday, left intact an appeals court decision upholding the government’s method for determining how much the Postal Service can charge for parcels. The rebuff is a victory for online retailer Amazon.com Inc., which relies on the Postal Service for deliveries and backed it in the court case.

UPS, which competes with the Postal Service in the package-delivery business, says its rival has an unfair advantage

UPS vs. FedEx: An Overview

United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) and FedEx Corp. (FDX) are two leading delivery services companies and main competitors to each other, at least in the public eye. However, to those following them closely, the two companies are quite

While UPS is widely known for its domestic ground package delivery, FedEx is mostly recognized for its global air express freight. The two companies also differ in terms of their approaches to serving customers, how they have fared in the e-commerce environment, and the different business structures unique to each company.

Package delivery and express service are where the two companies have made names for themselves. Although each company has other delivery services that make everything they do seemingly overlap.

As FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. beef up automation to keep pace with surging e-commerce and a potential threat from Amazon.com Inc., they’ve been stumped at a crucial stage: loading and unloading trucks. Robot makers are getting close to solving part of that puzzle.

Siemens AG and Honeywell International Inc. have built machines that pull packages from the back of a tractor-trailer and place them on conveyor belts, whizzing the parcels off for sorting. Making robots that can load trucks is more complicated, although clearing that hurdle isn’t far off.

“The biggest challenge in our world is: Every single package is different in size, shape, weight, color, material,” said Ted Dengel, managing director of operations technology at FedEx’s ground-delivery unit. “It makes it a very tricky problem.”

FedEx Corp this summer plans to begin testing a robot to handle home deliveries for partners ranging from Walmart Inc to Pizza Hut.

Shippers, retailers and restaurants are experimenting with robots, drones and self-driving cars in a bid to use automation to drive down the high cost of delivering gadgets, groceries and even cups of coffee the “last mile” to consumer doorsteps.

FedEx is teaming up with DEKA Development & Research Corp, whose founder Dean Kamen invented the Segway stand-up scooter and iBot stair-climbing wheelchair, for its project. The delivery company said the robots could become part of its SameDay service that operates in 1,900 cities around the world.