Postal Delivery Delays Trouble E-Commerce Sellers
Ecommerce sellers are experiencing major headaches and digital marketplaces like eBay Inc. are searching for alterative providers due major package delivery delays as the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) struggles to cope with the surge in demand for ecommerce. In a blog post written last week eBay said that USPS continues to struggle with the level of demand and that as a company, they are “working on other affordable, more reliable delivery options for sellers”.
The initial problems began for USPS in the beginning of the pandemic, when the service was struggling to cope with reduced staffing caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a surge in packages as more people were shopping online.
The problem for USPS have continued through the summer. Recently online seller have said that some packages are taking days or even weeks to arrive at their destinations and others can’t be controlled at all when shipped through USPS. This is complicating things for many small businesses, who rely on the postal service for affordable shipping rates.
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Unilever trialling geolocation technology in supply chain
As many companies set out to become more sustainable, Unilever has highlighted its intention to end deforestation across its supply chain, particularly in terms of the cultivation of crops like palm oil and soy. In order to achieve this, Unilever has partnered with Orbital Insight to leverage geolocation data to help identify individual farms and plantations, who are most likely to supply the palm oil mills in its extended supply chain.
The Orbital Insight technology utilises GPS data to enable traffic patterns to be spotted. A potential link is represented, where there is a consistent flow of traffic between an area of land and a mill. By combining tens of thousands of satellite images with geolocation data and then applying artificial intelligence and scalable data science, the system will provide new unique insights by predicting the likelihood that a farm or plantation is supplying any given mill. Initially the pilot program will test the technology in a small number of palm oil mills in Indonesia and soy mills in Brazil.
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Shippers turn to regional carriers to handle increased volume
With large logistics companies such as FedEx, UPS and USPS all struggling to keep up with the increased volume of goods needing to be shipped, many shippers are starting to also use regional carriers to handle this increased volume of parcels, according to logistics experts and Convey data.
In the first seven months of the year, an average of 17% of retail volume went through regional carriers compared to 3.8% in 2019 and 6.2% in 2018, according to figures from Convey data. The trend towards using regional carriers has become increasingly common as the year has progressed with 24% of all shipments traveling with regional carriers in July. This trend doesn’t mean that shippers are not using the large companies such as FedEx, UPS, and USPS. Instead, they are using regional carriers in order to supplement additional shipping needs.
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Have a lovely weekend!
