UPS and FedEx are going head to head to attract smaller customers in order to win the holiday shipping battle.
Transcript:
Conway Gittens: Wall Street continues to bask in the glow of the Trump rally with stocks trading near record highs. Travel and tourism stocks are in view on Friday with eyes on quarterly results. Expedia boosted full-year guidance after third-quarter bookings were stronger than expected. Meanwhile, quarterly results were mixed for Airbnb. Revenues topped forecasts but earnings were underwhelming.
In other news, there are fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and that means a battle for your shipping dollars.
UPS and FedEx are pulling out all the stops to make sure they get your order. The two are going head to head on price, undercutting one another, especially when it comes to luring orders from smaller businesses and merchants. The 2024 holiday season marks the first time both UPS and FedEx are offering discounts to smaller merchants usually reserved for bigger e-commerce players.
The discounts are already starting to kick in. According to ASF Logistics, ground shipping charges fell 2.5 percent in the third-quarter due in part to UPS and FedEx price cuts. Beefed-up competition is also a factor in pushing shipping costs lower. The U.S. Postal Service has stepped-up its ground shipping game, taking away market share. And Amazon is relying more on its own delivery fleet, which is now delivering more than two-thirds of its orders.
In the end – consumers might end up benefiting from all this competition. If retailers get into the holiday spirit and start passing on those shipping discounts to shoppers, then pressing the complete-my-order button will come with its own discount for you.
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