UPS introduces Saturday residential service for major Canadian cities

Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS recently announced it is rolling out its UPS Standard Service Saturday residential ground delivery for customers in major Canadian cities.

The company said that there is no extra cost to recipients, for this offering, adding that it provides shippers with a reliable way to get purchases delivered to customers over weekend hours.

What’s more, UPS noted that with this move it is the first global small package carrier in Canada to provide committed Saturday ground residential delivery of shipments from the United States and within Canada at no additional charge. It explained that the service will commence in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), with customers that normally receive Monday residential deliveries now receiving deliveries on Saturday, for packages that were in transit on Thursday and Friday.

UPS said that this new service is on track to be available by March in Montreal, Laval, and Calgary, and Greater Vancouver by March, and it added that upon being fully implemented, most Canadian addresses in metropolitan cities will be eligible to have packages delivered on Saturday, which includes packages coming into Canada across the border from the United States. And it added that through this initiative, businesses of all sizes, including small online retailers, will benefit from what it called a cost-effective way to get their products to customers on the weekend.

“Canadian and U.S. businesses have a great new way to create growth by serving customers with our Saturday residential delivery service,” said UPS Canada President Stephanie Dexter in a statement. “UPS is helping businesses meet customer expectations for timely, convenient deliveries. We are excited to help them grow and compete in today’s market.”

In an interview, Greg Kane, VP of Marketing at UPS Canada, told LM that a key driver for this initiative goes back to the onset of the pandemic, which saw B2C (business-to-consumer) activity in Canada accelerate to new heights, while having since slowed down somewhat, due to consumers returning to in-store shopping. But it has subsequently upped consumer expectations for getting deliveries at any time, coupled with deliveries being fast and convenient.

“In 2019, we spoke with some of our top retail customers in Canada, asking them about where they see weekend delivery fitting into their plans, and some said that it is something they see helping drive growth for their businesses, as well as a part of their two-to-five-year growth strategy,” he said. “When the pandemic hit, a lot of them had to pivot to direct-to-consumer delivery that is now a major part of their strategy, so we are in line with where they wanted to be, and they see it as a growth engine.”

That was evident in data from Angus Reid, which found that 74% of Canadians said it is important that commercial delivery services operate on weekdays and weekends, with nearly half believing it is already a normal occurrence for ground shipments.

Other findings from Angus Reid included: 51% of Canadians expect online purchases to be delivered in 1-2 days, including weekends; retail sales in Canada are pegged to increase 14% between 2022 and 2026; and by 2026, e-commerce as a percentage of retail sales will increase by 26%.

Those findings, said Kane—coupled with various economic and consumer factors, and customer feedback—pointed to the need for a market offering to help them grow their business and serve as an impetus for Saturday residential delivery.

“This is a general service offering, it's available to all customers,” said Kane.

“There is no special handling, it's how they handle packages today. There's no special fees for it. It's just like another day for them. Some of our strategic accounts in Canada have already asked for it, and we already do it as kind of a special operating plan. So, there's a few [customers] that we've been doing this for in the retail space. Now, we're rolling it out to all customers of all sizes.  The smaller retail customer now has the advantage of getting to their customers faster, and faster is one-to-two days faster or anything within a two-day radius of these destinations we're going to. And we're going with the major ones across Canada before the end of the first quarter. We'll get two days faster time on transit or what would have been delivered on Monday, if it was picked up on Thursday or Friday, will now be delivered and committed on a Saturday by the end of day.” - Kane

Beta testing for Saturday residential delivery was conducted during Peak Season in Toronto and outside the Greater Toronto area to make sure that the technology and customer satisfaction was there, which he explained went very well.

And he added that the service will be heading northbound, from a U.S. point of view, focusing on Canadian customers wanting access to getting their U.S. shipments faster.

“We are working on that now, and we are going to have that in place to all northbound shipments from the U.S., also with no additional fees processed and also delivered into those areas by Saturday. We expect to have all of the origins and destinations buttoned down this quarter while also working on the northbound shipments at the same time. We should have everything in Canada and northbound running by the end of the second quarter. This helps the smallest to the largest customer in Canada.”

From technology perspective, Kane noted that it is geared toward UPS’s customers being able to tell customers of their own customers when to expect Saturday deliveries through UPS’s delivery window notification technology, which he said UPS is enhancing this year.

“That will make it even better for their customers from an experience point of view and they will know what is coming,” he said. “We are also going to have Follow My Delivery, which is another enhancement to our visibility tools, and can tell a customer that a delivery is coming between 12-2 in the afternoon and tell a customer 15 minutes beforehand a driver is in your area and will deliver in the next 10-to-15 minutes. And you can track them through our tracking technology. There are a lot of enhancements to make that experience better for their consumers, which I think will help them grow their business and increase volume down the road.”