First it was AI-equipped onboard cameras watching Amazon’s contract drivers along their routes. Now an app called Mentor monitors driver performance, which can interpret legitimate activities as risky ones, resulting in lower scores and sometimes termination. The company has reportedly been using Mentor for years.
The U.S. Postal Service had a very rare quarter in the black, and the Postmaster General promised to implement a bold 10-year plan to address shortfalls in service, infrastructure and the workforce, saying the disastrous delivery performance over the holidays was unacceptable.
Yet another effort is underway in Congress to eliminate the costly prefunding of retiree healthcare benefits that have been an albatross for the U.S. Postal Service since a 2006 reform measure, and this time appears to have some more bipartisan momentum.
Discount retail chain Family Dollar is jumping on the same-day delivery bandwagon through a national partnership with last mile leader Instacart, covering 6,000 of its stores in the U.S., the companies announced. They ran a successful pilot program in late 2020 at 275 Family Dollar stores and are now expanding it nationally.
Amazon has filed a motion with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to postpone a planned union vote next month at its fulfillment center in Bessemer, AL, which if successful would create its first union shop, an outcome the ecommerce giant has vigorously opposed at every turn. The vote is scheduled from Feb. 8-March 29.
FedEx has added on yet another surcharge, this time a 30 cent per package peak residential delivery charge for shippers who hand off an average of 30,000 packages weekly between Jan. 4-31 between FedEx Express, Ground and SmartPost, effective Feb. 15 and again until further notice. They apply to Ground and Express shipments.
The U.S. Post Office suffered most in terms of on-time performance and complaints this peak holiday season, experts agreed, with FedEx also having issues but not to the same extent and UPS doing better. Carriers of all stripes were buried by a cataclysmic holiday package deluge from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
UPS has extended shipping surcharges into 2021, with some similarities and some differences FedEx. Most notable was a steeper price drop for the surcharge on UPS’s SurePost last-mile service, used by many smaller ecommerce shippers, as FedEx may be covering the cost of shifting volume from the USPS into its own ground network.
FedEx announced this week it is extending peak surcharges beyond the holiday season, while lowering them from higher holiday levels, citing the expectation of ongoing heavy volume and associated costs, although some observers question that rationale amid strong financial results. UPS is expected to follow its duopoly partner.
Heading in the home stretch of the holiday peak season in an extraordinary year, and past the cutoffs for Christmas delivery by ground at major parcel carriers, transit time performance is holding up well even though expected delays reports are popping up. Vaccine delivery and heavy weather are compounding matters.