Last-Mile Delivery

How this simple, sustainable solution could ease the problem of double-parked delivery vehicles.

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.

Ryder officials said that bringing Cardinal into the fold will help to enable the company’s growth and also further strengthen its position as a leading customized North American-based dedicated contract carrie

Oak Brook, Ill.-based freight transportation and logistics services provider Hub Group took steps to expand its final mile service portfolio, announcing it has acquired Forward Air Final Mile (FAFM), a subsidiary of Greenville, Tenn.-based asset-light freight and logistics services provider Forward Air.

The USPS cited various investments it has made, in advance of the 2023 Peak Season, including: hiring 10,000 seasonal employees; utilizing 348 new package sorting machines; increasing daily processing capacity to approximately 70 million; moving 95% of volume via more reliable ground transportation, for First Class Mail and more than 95% of First-Class packages; and its new USPS Ground Advantage Shipping Service

This expansion follows the company’s 2022 rollout of a new transcontinental delivery service, which they said is focused on helping retailers reach consumers in the nation’s most populated regions with faster and more reliable home delivery at a cheaper cost, while connecting the companies East and West Coast delivery footprints to move packages from coast to coast in three days (in some cases).

This follows its Texas-based expansion plan, which was rolled out in August 2022, with a focus on what it called the “fast-growing megaregion of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, with the Dallas-Fort Worth facility to function as the major Texas-based sort hub, reaching 19 million new consumers through faster residential e-commerce delivery services.

The findings of the study, entitled “How Retailers Can Build Supply Chains That Thrive in the Post-Pandemic World,” were based on a partnership between OnTrac and Hanover Research through a survey of more than 150 C-Suite, VP, and director level supply chain professionals at large retailers, focusing on the challenges they are facing and how they plan to respond to those challenges, as well as key investment areas for them.

USPS officials attributed the operating revenue loss to declining volumes seen mainly in the organization’s Marketing Mail and Shipping and Packages categories.

An OnTrac spokesperson told LM that uniting the companies under a single name and brand identity was the final pieces in combining the LaserShip and OnTrac delivery networks.

Waterloo, Ontario-based Descartes, a provider of logistics based on-demand, software-as-a-service offerings, is expanding its final-mile services portfolio, announcing this week it has acquired Minneapolis-based GroundCloud, a cloud-based provider of final-mile carrier solutions and road safety compliance tools. The purchase price was $138 million, according to Descartes.

After stating in July that it was preparing to cut down on its Sunday delivery services in remote and rural areas of the United States, from 95% to 80% of the U.S. population, Memphis-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider FedEx is now reducing its Sunday delivery footprint to around 50% of the country, according to various reports.

Earlier this week, FedEx Freight, the less-than-truckload (LTL) subsidiary of Memphis-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider FedEx, said it has expanded its FedEx Freight Direct e-commerce offering for big and bulky items.

The report, entitled “Making it Count”: Big and Bulky Last-Mile Delivery in the United States,” is the result of a partnership between Armstrong and the National Home Delivery Association (NHDA) and focuses on various trends and themes, including: the usage of independent contractors compared to employee drivers; customer and revenue trends by vertical industry; and the growing use of freight brokerage to source last-mile carrier capacity.

Orlando-based OneRail, a provider of final mile delivery services for enterprise shippers via a delivery fulfillment SaaS platform, announced it has closed its $33 million Series B funding round. This most recent round of investment brings the company’s total capital raise to $54.5 million, going back to its seed round in 2020.