Ups And Fedex
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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: December 2, 2011 Today we’re discussing one of our favorite topics, shipping rate negotiation tactics and negotiating carrier agreements. Let’s begin with how most companies approach carrier negotiations. ...

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: March 19, 2011 FedEx and UPS are a modern-day oligopoly. Let’s explain what that means. ...

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Publisher's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: May 1, 2017 In this post, we’ll help you understand how to become a FedEx and UPS power user. Let's start at the beginning with what FedEx and UPS power users are. ...

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated with new links and content. Original Publication Date: October 26, 2015 This post will explain a fee that UPS and FedEx rolled out a few years ago. As a matter of fact, what they really did was drop a bomb on drop shippers. But before we get into what that is, let’s discuss the thre...

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The global novel coronavirus pandemic has created great uncertainty all over the world. The disruptions to travel and commerce has led UPS and FedEx to suspend all service guarantees for Express, Ground and Freight for both Domestic and International shipments immediately and until further notice. This means that UPS and FedEx will no longer honor their promise to give you a refund when your ship...

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UPS and FedEx 2020 rate increases were recently announced. And as in years prior, it's an average 4.9% rate increase across the board. That's for the service level rates themselves. If you look at the UPS and FedEx 2020 rate increases, however, you'll see a different impact that you may not be so happy about. Most surcharges have gone up about 3 1/2 to 4%. But some of them, i...

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Peak shipping season is here and to ensure your packages are delivered in time for the Holidays, download our Holiday Shipping Deadline Calendar below. In addition, please be aware of this year’s Peak Season surcharges. On October 1, 2019, UPS implemented the following Peak Season surcharges: ...

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It's that time of year once again. UPS & FedEx are dishing out another costly general price increase to small parcel shippers effective December 29, 2019 for UPS and January 6, 2020 for FedEx. It is important to understand that the announced UPS & FedEx rate increases are only averages and the impact on your company could vary greatly. Over the past decade (2010-2020), UPS an...

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Audit Recovery Saves You Time And Money Audit Recovery and Audit Recovery Bill pay are both topics that you should know about. Let's talk about the Audit first. Right now, if you went onto UPS or FedEx website, you would find the data that you're looking for will be cumbersome. What the Audit does...

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The FedEx Dimensional Weight Explained The FedEx dimensional weight can cause a lot of problems for customers. As a company that processes a tremendous amount of shipping data, we see a lot of issues with this. One of the common issues we see is being billed at dimensional weight versus actual weight. So what does that even mean? To be able to understand how carrier pricin...

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UPS Billable Weight Is Important To Understand UPS billable weight is an important topic worth talking about. There are a couple of variables that go into determining UPS billable weight. So, shipping rates depend on three variables. You have the ...

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FedEx Waivers Cause The Company To Lose Customers FedEx waivers are something that people often overlook and can cause you to lose money. For those of you shipping with FedEx, I want to inform you of a recent contractual trend that's on the rise. It jeopardizes your right to late delivery re...

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UPS SurePost And FedEx SmartPost Pros vs Cons UPS SurePost and FedEx SmartPost both have their pros and cons and I'm here to talk about that today. Now, one of the biggest pros is that it is a lot more affordable to use SurePost and SmartPost than it is to ...

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FedEx and UPS Carrier Exceptions Can Save You Money Alright, today we'll be talking about the different carrier exceptions. In particular, I'm going over carrier exceptions for both FedEx and UPS. They're very similar so I'll kind of go over them all in the same bucket. First, we'll talk about pick up exceptions. Sometimes no packages were picked up and pick up is not rescheduled. Th...

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UPS Waiver Basics There are a few things to remember about a UPS waiver. For those of you shipping with UPS, you're aware that they guarantee their services. This excludes their hybrid services. For example, let's say that you're shipping a package from Southern California to New York. Based on the ser...

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UPS and FedEx Billing Insights from the Pros Hey, guys, Rich with Lojistic here. I'm here to talk about UPS and FedEx billing with any of you that are still on paper invoices. Federal Express and UPS both offer online services. This will allow you to build in ...

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UPS Customer Service Basics The first thing you need to do is actually call UPS's billing department. Now, there's a particular number for UPS billing department. You can actually get to the billing department through the normal UPS customer service number. You press a number and they'll transfer you to the billing department. But there is a specific number in case you are...

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FedEx Customer Service Avenues for Refund To get a refund from FedEx, the first thing you do is call the FedEx Revenue Services. That's the billing department. They do have a normal FedEx customer service number that you can call. There is a billing department that you can call as well for FedEx Revenue Services. If you call the normal FedEx number, you can ask them to tra...

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Lowering UPS Shipping Rates: First Steps The best way for lowering UPS shipping rates is to get detailed reports on your current shipping. This should include all the relevant characteristics. It should be things like your average cost is by service level and your average discounts. Take a look at those, especially if your last negotiated contract was about six to nine mon...

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UPS Shipping Rates Versus FedEx UPS shipping rates are similar when you compare them to FedEx shipping rates. There aren't any certain rates that are different between UPS and FedEx. This is unless you are looking at some of the surcharges. UPS and ...

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FedEx Shipping Rates: Important Tips to Keep in Mind There aren't unique shipping charges or surcharges in FedEx shipping rates compared to UPS. They actually both have very similar charges and surcharges. The main thing that you want to take into account are the differences in those charges. UPS might call s...

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Lowering Shipping Rates: Some Basics to Remember Here are some things to keep in mind about lowering FedEx shipping rates. The clearest, easiest way is to renegotiate the contract. So, to do to lower your FedEx rates is to take account the timeframe in which you last negotiated your contract. As long as it's withi...

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UPS Quantum View Keeps Your Money So as you can imagine, UPS looks down on the parcel auditing industry. Now, why might this be, you ask? It's because auditing services, like Lojistic, returns money to the shipper or cus...

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FedEx InSight: Why They Made It Hey guys. So as you can imagine, FedEx looks down on the parcel auditing industry. Now, why might that be? Well, auditing services like what Lojistic provides put money back in the shipper's pocket. FedEx Insight would otherwise allow FedEx to keep this money. So, as you can imagine, FedEx does everything that they can to deal with this. T...

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FedEx Contracts Have Changed FedEx contracts have changed like UPS. In fact, FedEx calls it over-max fee while UPS calls it unauthorized charge fee. It's the same thing. It's for packages that are heavy and l...

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UPS Service Guarantee: What to Know Here are important things to know about a UPS service guarantee. When you ship a package with them in any way, they offer a UPS service guarantee. Here's an example. Say I want to ship a package to New York and want to ship it either next day air, next day air saver, or ground. It comes with a delivery guarantee. This means that they're going to gu...

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FedEx Service Guarantee Basics FedEx service guarantee agreements work similarly to those from UPS. They actually call their FedEx service guarantee clause, "The Money Ba...

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UPS Contracts: Changes to Know UPS contracts changed in 2019. I would say some of the most notable impacts have been in some of the surcharges. So, in 2018, UPS took a massive increase in their over-max fee. That's when you're shipping very large packages, whether it be long or heavy. That fee went from $300 to $650 by the end of the year. This year that fee is still in effect. This ...

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FedEx business customers spending around $60,000 or more annually can expect to see a waiver of their “Money Back Guarantee” in their next FedEx Agreement revision, assuming a waiver isn’t already there.  A waiver of the FedEx Money Back Guarantee eliminates a customer’s right to a refund when FedEx fails to meet their time in transit commitment (aka guarant...

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In a global economy you have internal/external pressures to maintain high levels of performance at the same time managing the costs between customers and carriers. The challenge is managing your parcel shipping costs while continuing to reflect the capabilities that makes your company truly unique and drive its value. These capabilities stand out as true differentiat...

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These five rules apply to everything from negotiating the price you’ll pay for your next car to getting a better deal on the donuts you’re bringing into the office on Friday.  When applied to negotiating your parcel carrier contracts however, following these rules may save you enough to buy a fleet of cars, or enough donuts for your whole office building....

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“I’m a really bad negotiator”, said no one ever.  Especially in logistics. Case in point, I was on a sales call last week and the gentleman responsible for negotiating the existing UPS and FedEx contracts for his company was VERY confident in his shrewd negotiation skills.  “My new parcel rates are amazing. I just negotiated a 9% savings with my incumbent p...

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It's that time of the year again! Gather ye e-commerce retailers and all happy package senders...For the holiday shipping season is upon us. But to get those presents or boxes of coal to all the little boys and girls on time, we have to ship them by these deadlines! Also, we have to be mindful that service level guarantees will be suspended according to the schedule below. UPS...

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Let's start right at the beginning. Most people don’t know what a parcel audit is. A parcel audit is the task of going through each and every shipping invoice to look at carrier service errors you can be refunded for. The process is extremely tedious and time consuming. This is where 3rd party parcel auditin...

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You have the achy feeling that somehow, someway, your parcel shipping is draining your company of valuable revenue. Every month you see profits melt away with ever increasing shipping invoice bills that you have no idea if they are correct or just plain filled with mistakes and lost saving opportunities. What are you missing in terms of savings and knowledge about y...

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UPS Peak Surcharges Arrives in the Parcel World *Updated with SurePost Peak Surcharge After experimenting on several high-volume peak shippers last year, UPS announced on Monday that it is implementing Peak Surcharges on select packages tendered b...

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Parcel Forum 2017 has just announced their conference line-up. Our very own parcel analytics gurus Bryan Van Suchtelen and James Matthews will be proudly representing Lojistic at the Forum this year. ...

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The 2016 Fedex and UPS General Rate Increases are now in effect, and we’ve updated our GRI Whitepaper to reflect the changes to come. Need a quick refresher? We’ve got you covered. On Wednesday, September 16, FedEx announced its annual general rate increase (GRI). Effective January 4, 2016, rates will be impa...

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When booking a shipment, it makes sense to assume that two-day air would be the best choice to get a package where you need it in two days. And the carriers are probably happy that overnight air would be your first choice! But, depending on what zone you’re shipping to/from, other, cheaper options may be available to get your shipment where you need it, when you ne...

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On Wednesday, September 16, FedEx announced its annual general rate increase (GRI). Effective January 4, 2016, rates will be impacted as follows: FedEx Express will see a 4.9% average increase for US domestic, export, and import services FedEX Ground and H...

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The transportation industry devised the Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC) system to help identify competing companies. Each SCAC identification code ranges between 2 and 4 alphabetical characters long. During the 1960s, The National Motor Freight Traffic Association developed the SCAC system in order to help convert their paper-based documents into computerized records. Freight carriers must use ...

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Shipping costs are über-important. For an expense that makes up (on average) 10% of your top line, they definitely deserve your undivided attention. Maintaining a solid relationship with your carrier reps can lead to improved discounts, incentives, and more. No doubt you’ve worked hard to negotiate a competitive pricing agreement and it behooves you to protect aga...

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Update: The USPS has postponed its rate increase that was scheduled for 4/26/2015, and FedEx has followed suit.  FedEx has just announced the second SmartPost rate increase of 2015. Effective April 27, SmartPost rates will increase by 8.3%. The increase was brought about by a recent postage increase announcement by USPS. Shippers who have negotiated a general rate incr...

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Six weeks ago FedEx announced what will likely be the single largest rate increase on record for many shippers.  As predicted, UPS announced that they are following FedEx’s lead.  Effective Monday, December 29, 2014, UPS will impose dimensional weight (DIM) pricing on all Ground packages. To varying degrees, this change ...

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If you have been thinking about becoming a freight agent or a freight broker agent, you may be wondering how freight agent jobs have been doing since the recession. Luckily, logistics is very much a recession-proof industry: Although logistics activity can be dampened in certain areas and at certain times, there will always be a need to move goods from one place to a...

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Is your business challenged by the day-to-day difficulties of business to business logistics? If so, you are not alone. Business to business or “B2B” logistics planning is very distinct from the business-to-consumer or “B2C” landscape that many companies have a greater level of familiarity with. The “B2B” arena of business logistics management comes with all the challenges of “B2C”...

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Shipping comparison is one of the most important ways that you can save money on your logistics needs, but that does not mean it is easy to do an enterprise-wide shipping cost comparison. When you compare shipping costs, it is important to be methodical and ensure that you are taking all the pertinent factors into account. That being the case, you might wonder if the investment of time and effort ...

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No matter what industry you are in, you already know that implementing the right logistic solutions is critical to your business. You also know that effective and efficient logistics management is one of the best ways to control your costs as your business grows. However, we can get so caught up in the details of freight management logistics that we apply a definition to the field that is too broa...

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Even with the brunt of the Great Recession behind us, the global shipping industry has still seen companies slip into the deep blue of nonexistence. However, in the most recent month of market trading, some have bounced back with the best figures seen in years; we’re thinking about Ultrapetrol, whose stock soared...

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Shipping solutions can sometimes feel like more trouble than they’re worth. We know it, and so do you; but this doesn’t have to be the case for the upstart or the entrepreneur. Since the world has grown into an increasingly digital marketplace, more and more solutions to shipping woes are emerging. The legacy ...

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For all businesses that ships a constant amount of items, it’s important to note the changing fluctuations of the shipping world, whether it be the updates in new competitors, as we previously noted in our Amazon blog post, or the quarterly earnings calls.  These changes are important because they can help to prepare for and predict certain trends within future pricing and possible action the c...

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UPS and FedEx announced their January 2012 general price increases (GPI). Why is this important? For any company that ships parcels, the GPI will affect your overall shipping costs! As the 2011 GPI showed, there can be substantial impacts on shipping costs resulting from changes to accessorial charges and dimensional weight formulas. The 2012 increases are only announced as averages and can var...

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Shipping with FedEx and UPS can be very costly. Over the last year, prices have risen substantially. However, there are some simple things that budget-conscious customers can do to discount FedEx and UPS shipping costs without sacrificing delivery speed. Use Third Party Insurance FedEx and UP...

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By closely evaluating your business’s shipping and distribution patterns, you may identify many areas that you can easily discount freight costs. Below are 3 simple practices that will allow you to effectively assess your current practices, and help you identify areas for improvement.Logistics ReportingLogistics reporting is essential in effectively...

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Besides helping you get the available discounts, a freight audit services provider can assist you to lower your shipping costs. Though FedEx and UPS are reliable, there are instances when they make erroneous billings because of certain factors. Late deliveries, incorrect accessorial charges and address correction charges are some of the caus...

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Virtually every carrier invoice received by your company contains erroneous charges that should be refunded to you. Most carrier billing errors are the result of human error and oversight, which occur regularly and continuously. These overcharges amount to much more than mere “chump change”!Your carrier deserves to be paid for services rendered and you deserve to be billed accurate...

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Every year, UPS and FedEx announce their respective general price increases (GPI). Shippers, both large and small, scramble to determine the effective impact on their shipping costs. Since the announced increases are only averages, the true impact for any given business can vary greatly.In January 2011, the carrier’s GPI had a very substantial impact on accessorial charges, such as: ...

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Did you know that nearly all UPS and FedEx service levels have time in-transit delivery guarantees? Even ground services have a guarantee to be delivered within a certain time frame. Many shippers can significantly reduce shipping costs by improving their organization’s policies and practices related to carrier service level selection for any given shipmen...

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Editors note: This post was originally published July 23, 2011 and most recently updated August 2020. Dimensional weight (DIM) is a volumetric standard that is calculated by multiplying the length by width by height of a package and then dividing by a factor/divisor. Via dimensional weight charges, carriers like UPS and FedEx have the ability to rate l...

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The global shipping industry may be engaging in some monopolistic practices to shore up profits in these tough economic times. One practice that recently gained attention centers on third party freight auditing consultants who audit shipping agreements and help with carrie...

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UPS and FedEx are among the world’s largest small-package carriers, both by revenue and volume. When you compare UPS and FedEx, both offer ground, air, and ocean freight shipping and shipping-related services. FedEx and UPS ship over 10 million packages daily for businesses and individual customers worldwide. A consideration of ...

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Given the advanced technology and automated systems, it is a common (invalid) assumption that the customer billing systems of carriers such as UPS and FedEx are infallible and afford little to no room for billing errors. Shippers subscribing to this line of thought are committing a considerable oversight. Although many components of a carrier’s billing process are automated, there are...

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While FedEx and UPS guarantee the on-time delivery of your packages, not every shipment is on time. If they're just one minute late, you may be entitled to a 100 percent refund of the shipping charges. They will honor this guarantee—but only after you do some considerable legwork. This can get pretty complicated, especially if you ship hundreds of packages a week or month. After tracking your s...

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There are shipping audit services that help reduce shipping costs by verifying whether your delivery is residential or commercial. 91 percent of the 140 million Postal Service delivery points fall into the residential category. Most shipping companies charge a higher rate for delivery to a residence. S...

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Shipments under 150 lbs are typically considered small parcel. Most shipping companies like FedEx and UPS will insure such packages up to $100 of product loss or damage. This is one reason many e-commerce sellers ship low cost items without insurance. If you're shipping something fragile, or if you just need more protection, you can opt for "declared value" insurance, which both FedEx and UPS offe...

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The link below provides a historical chart of the FedEx and UPS fuel surcharge rate. Of note, the UPS and FedEx surcharges (air and ground) are linked to their respective indices with a two month lag (i.e. the surcharge reflects the average fuel price from two months ago). In addition, the indices are typically recalibrated in conjunction with the FedEx and UPS annual rate increase. For example, t...

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Customer service can be subjective, depending on the circumstances and the specific area of the country you happen to be located. Unlike a comparison of UPS vs FedEx rates, when you compare UPS to FedEx customer service, you'll find some real and some anecdotal dif...

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Freight auditing services have become critically important since FedEx and UPS errors are present in virtually every invoice. They are often the result of late deliveries, invalid residential delivery charges, and/or incorrect address correction charges. Sometimes packages are manifested but not ship...

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Shipping companies like UPS and FedEx are caught between a "rock and a hard place."  The rock is ever-rising fuel prices, which some economists say will top $4 per gallon for diesel and gas.  The "hard place" is eating that cost or passing it on to clients and customers who are themselves fighting a prolonged recession. Sure, UPS and FedEx can add surcharges to cover fuel costs--but their custom...

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If your company does a high volume of shipping and you're being squeezed by your steely-eye comptroller to cut shipping costs, read on. What you need to be a hero is a serious shipping comparison tool. One of these, the ...

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These days, cheap shipping rates are scarcer than feathers in a cuckoo clock. Recent changes to both FedEx rates and UPS rates were bitter to swallow. Both companies announced increases to small package shipping rates that began with the New Year. Adding salt to the wound was a key change in how both FedEx and UPS now calculate ...

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When Federal Express, usually a play yard buddy of UPS, found out that if the Federal Aviation Administration’s Reauthorization Bill [FAARB], now in its 16th temporary extension, gets the presidential sign-off, Federal Express may lose out on a highly cost-effective advantage over UPS.  The bill commands a shift of drivers and other non-airline workers from the National Railway Labor...

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If you ship anything on a regular basis, you probably know that the two biggest competitive small parcel package carriers in the U.S. are UPS and FedEx services. Both have earned quite a reputation in the small parcel shipping business. And both have pulled out all the stops to gain your trust and your business.  If you want to ...

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I was dumbfounded last week to learn a prospective client, spending millions of dollars each year on shipping, was unaware that UPS and FedEx ground services are guaranteed…just like air and international shipments.  “Yeah, we perform our own internal shipping audit...

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