Mega carriers have a goods problem: Too much business. Canadian shippers have the reciprocal problem: Higher shipping costs that continue to go higher!
- Carriers have again announce additional "peak surcharges" for both ground and express shipments.
- A huge impact to costs are the additional surcharges such as additional handling, residential delivery, restricted access to economy air import shipping, and redefining what qualifies as oversize.
- Carriers are citing high volumes and pandemic related capacity issues as the reason for the increases.
The surcharge on residential shipping will have the biggest effect on e-commerce. Jet has build direct import international e-commerce solutions to enable Canadian sellers to lower their costs. Carrier price increases have a direct impact on all direct-to-consumer e-commerce businesses.
FedEx, for example, had a 23% year-over-year increase in revenue for latest fiscal year with net income up over 150%. Peak surcharges will add to carriers profitability and enable further investments but are challenging shippers like never before.
Shipping Alternatives versus Alternative Carriers
The truth is that parcel delivery to and from Canada and the US is dominated by a few mega carriers. The only real competition for has come from the fulfillment services of Amazon, and some regional carriers such as Intelcom (in Canada). But these solutions require mega volumes or having to use Amazon fulfillment.
Learn more from our team regarding shipping ecommerce parcels from Canada including valuation, HSCodes, payment of VAT
Shipping International ecommerce orders direct to country of sale
Jet Worldwide has best in class shipping options for ecommerce orders directly sent from Canada. Minimum volumes are required. Contact Jet's team for details and see our PDF presentation below.
Best Resellers in Canada for International Shipping
The parcel delivery market is dominated by a couple mega carriers and, ironically, using them directly can be more costly than via a partner or reseller. Some websites offer a way to "comparison shop" between carriers while others provide a deeper relationship with a carrier or two.
The Leading Resellers in Canada include:
- Eshipper (comparison shipping options)
- Secure Ship (comparison shipping options of retail rates)
- Ship Time (via Costco)
- Jet Worldwide (Canadian international Import and Export logistics experts)
The comparison shopping sites are helpful and offer discounts from published tariffs and all the above choices are easily researched online.
Second Tier Shipping Options:
Many companies are starting to look at alternatives beyond using the mega carriers directly as they have in the past. Using resellers often was associated with lower quality. In truth, many online comparison sites core skills have more to do with Google SEO than actual shipping expertise.
However, carriers have embraced the role of resellers as being better equipped to manage small customers. For larger shippers, the multi-carrier platform and logistics expertise can bring a greater value than using carriers directly.
At Jet Worldwide, we pride ourselves on our logistics support more than we do on simply providing cost comparisons.
Lowering Shipping Costs for International E-Commerce
The cross border e-commerce is growing exponentially from Canada. Sellers need much lower last mile costs in order to grow their volumes further. See section above regarding shipping direct to major international markets from Canada.
Transparency Matters
While it certainly pays to shop around, the cargo will ultimately end up in the cargo holds of a few carriers. Often the savings is not in the rate charged but in the processes. This is especially true for international shippers who do not take full advantage of Canada's many free trade agreements and proper use of descriptions, HS codes and export declarations.
Carriers, resellers and third party logistics should be up front with their customers as to who they will be using and ways to reduce costs.
Shipping online orders to the UK
Prepayment of Value Added Tax to European Union Countries
Understanding Benefits of Canada's Free Trade Agreements
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