UPS, FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers pressed through a record crush of holiday shipments to deliver most packages in time for Christmas – but more than 2 million parcels did not arrive before the big day, according to new data.
Logistics data firm ShipMatrix said the on-time delivery rate for UPS was 97.6 percent for packages scheduled for delivery between Dec. 20 and 26, while FedEx came in at 96.5 percent and the Postal Service at 94.7 percent.
Because of the huge volumes of packages being moved, even those small percentages of delayed deliveries can affect millions of packages.
It’s still better than many feared during a peak period that had unprecedented holiday season demand piled on top of pandemic home deliveries and urgent vaccine shipments. Shipping firms delivered more than 3 billion packages throughout the full peak holiday period, which typically starts the day after Thanksgiving.
But some deliveries were made on Christmas Day, and hundreds of thousands of packages were delayed by several days, according to ShipMatrix president Satish Jindel. He expects that will result in more return shipments.