Atlanta, Georgia: FedEx Corp. attributed its failure to deliver some Christmas packages to volumes that “far exceeded all previous records” after warning last week that bad weather would be to blame for some gifts showing up late.
“An unprecedented surge of last-minute e-commerce shipments” flooded in ahead of the holiday, FedEx said on Monday in a statement, going beyond the company’s focus on storms in a December 24 forecast of tardy Christmas deliveries. United Parcel Service Inc. reported completing all the deliveries it had promised ahead of December 25.
Operations have returned to normal after the deployment of thousands of workers on Christmas Day, FedEx said. The Express unit, which offers expedited delivery, also expanded Saturday service on Dec. 26 to handle late parcels as well as normal business, according to FedEx, which didn’t give details on why or how its network of jets, sorting facilities and delivery vehicles was unable to handle the increase.
“My take on it is UPS was much better prepared to handle it than FedEx was,” said David Huckeba, a partner at logistics consulting firm Intelligent Audit. “I just don’t think they were ready or able to handle the volumes they got.”
Aside from tornadoes and other storms that plagued the South around Christmas, heavy rains in the Northeast probably weighed on FedEx, said Satish Jindel, whose ShipMatrix Inc. tracks on-time rates. FedEx Express operates an air hub in Newark, New Jersey, and some states surrounding that hub had on-time delivery rates of less than 80 per cent on December 23 following the storms, Jindel said.
Weather, not operational problems, probably deserves most of the blame, Jindel said.
“If God decides to dump weather challenges, the safety of FedEx workers should take priority over people getting packages on time,” Jindel said.
FedEx made that point on Dec. 24, when it said some employees would work Christmas Day to finish deliveries. “Due to the severe weather yesterday, we made operational adjustments to keep our team members safe and to avoid major service disruptions,” FedEx said then.
UPS completed its deliveries on Christmas Eve, and customer feedback suggests everything was delivered on time, spokesman Glenn Zaccara said Monday by email. UPS struggled early in the holiday season, with an on-time delivery rate of 93 per cent in the week following Black Friday. However, the company was able to catch up as the holiday approached, he said.
Late online orders and bad weather forced UPS to miss some Christmas deliveries two years ago, spotlighting Americans’ increasing embrace of e-commerce and the struggles of shipping companies to match capacity to consumers’ demand.
