Parcel market being reshaped by technology, private networks, new competitors, surging costs, and increasingly savvy shippers

Jeff Wolpov, senior vice president of e-commerce and last mile for transportation and logistics giant Ryder, has ridden the roller coaster that has been the parcel express market for the better part of two decades. He’s helped Ryder’s customers navigate the early days of online shopping, survive the disruption of Covid and the resulting surge in e-commerce sales, adapt to and employ omnichannel strategies, and meet the demands of today’s consumers, who’ve been trained by Amazon to buy just about anything online and want it tomorrow.

“There’s an old adage that [with an e-commerce sale,] you can have it fast, cheap, or right, but pick two,” he recalls. “Not anymore. Now retailers and their consumers want all three.”

And that’s just one of the challenges facing parcel service providers in what many industry observers see as a market undergoing a level of wrenching change that’s unprecedented and is rewriting the script for who and what is a parcel carrier today and how shippers pick and choose who to use.

“What has changed is the complexity of the parcel market,” Wolpov says. “The main point our customers reinforce with us all the time is their desire to constantly weigh the balance between speed and price. And how adding new carriers can refine and improve those decisions.”

This story was originally published by DC Velocity. Read the full story at DC Velocity →