Bloomberg’s Julie Hyman discusses UPS’ supply chain woes and holiday online sales. She speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.”
Category: UPS News
United Parcel Service (UPS), the leading package delivery services company in the world received mixed praises and blame over its delayed Christmas deliveries. As announced by the company last Tuesday, it was not be able to deliver some packages in time for Christmas due to the larger than expected volume of deliveries. According to Susan Rosenberg, UPS spokeswoman, “The volume of air packages in the UPS system did exceed capacity as demand was much greater than our forecast.”
While Amazon.com (AMZN) got a lot of press this month talking up future delivery by drones — and FedEx makes some fun of that — FedEx and United Parcel Service are trucking ahead with ways to optimize human drivers.
Both UPS and FedEx are gung-ho on improving processes via automation and data crunching. A big chunk of it is about streamlining the delivery path so drivers can do more per minute and mile. They’re also exploring electric trucks and other alternative-fuel vehicles.
Humans remain integral to the shipping business, but analyst Becker points out that UPS and FedEx are “far more automated” than they once were and are delivering “more packages with fewer people” per package.
Santa’s sleigh didn’t make it in time for Christmas for some this year due to shipping problems at UPS and FedEx.
The delays were blamed on poor weather earlier this week in parts of the country as well as overloaded systems. The holiday shopping period this year was shorter than usual, more buying was done online and Americans’ tendency to wait until the last possible second to shop probably didn’t help either.
While some customers may get money back, they might think twice about ordering online next year.
Thousands of Americans awoke this morning to a somewhat diminished Christmas, thanks to an epic fail by package handler UPS, which announced yesterday that – oops! — some packages slated for December 24 delivery would not be arriving until after the holiday. Sorry ‘bout that.
While the delivery of gifts may not be the essence of Christmas, it is the essence of the package delivery business – especially a business like UPS that has relentlessly touted its expertise in logistics – see this 2010 ad (entitled “we [heart] logistics”) in which the classic “That’s Amore” has been rewritten, “That’s Logistics.”
Yet, UPS failed logistics – miserably — offering up the measly explanation, “demand was higher than forecast.” Isn’t getting this right on arguably the most important deadline of the year pretty much the essence of logistics?