[00:00:00] Joe Dieter: These are the next few months that’ll make or break your business, and for some companies, this will decide whether or not you get to continue selling things online next year. It’s the next few months. So this actually really matters. This isn’t just something shipping nerds talk about, peak season.
This is the peak pressure point of the year for people that are trying to make the world of ecommerce and making sure goods get safely to billions of end consumers work smoothly. This, this is the most important time of the year to do that.
[00:00:24] Lori Boyer: Welcome to Unboxing Logistics. I’m your host, Lori Boyer of EasyPost, and today is a podcast episode that I’ve been kind of having a hard time sleeping ’cause I’ve been really excited.
I’ve got my good friend, Joe Dieter, here with us, and we’re gonna be talking about the upcoming peak season. We’re gonna be talking about the biggest concerns that we’re seeing our audience face today. We’re gonna talk cost. We’re gonna talk carriers. Carriers is kind of our, our bread and butter. We eat, sleep, drink carriers here at EasyPost.
And so I have brought in my friend, Joe Dieter. He is an expert on everything to do with carriers, peak, shipping. I mean, y’all, this guy just doesn’t do anything except think about shipping. I think that’s- it’s his major passion. Joe, introduce yourself. He’s back again. He’s one of our favorites. But Joe for people who somehow have missed you, well, introduce yourself to our audience.
[00:01:29] Joe Dieter: Well, thanks for the kind words. Yeah, so I’m, I’m here at EasyPost. We’re teammates. And we are excited. I mean, this is the most important time of the year for us, and for the thousands and thousands of shippers and companies we work with, and the hundred carriers we work with. This is the most critical next few months.
And so I’ll, I’ll start there, that we’re excited about that. I am with our products team and, and product marketing, so we sit right between product and, and growth here at EasyPost. But we get to chat with a lot of customers And we have empathy, ’cause listen, like if, if you are selling things online or you’re a 3PL helping people fulfill orders that are selling things online, these are the next few months that’ll make or break your business.
And for some companies, this will decide whether or not you get to continue selling things online next year. It’s the next few months, so this actually really matters. This isn’t just something shipping nerds talk about, peak season. This is the peak pressure point of the year for people that are trying to make the world of ecommerce and making sure goods get safely to billions of end consumers work smoothly.
This, this is the most important time of the year to do that. So there’s a lot that comes across our desk and we’re excited to, to talk about what we’re learning.
[00:02:42] Lori Boyer: I am really excited. We, this year we did a peak preparedness survey. Really really fun. Really cool. We were able to connect with a bunch of shippers and kind of get the, put our, our finger on the pulse a little bit of what people are nervous about, what people are anticipating, and so we’re gonna kinda talk about that.
What was interesting… Well, there was something that was not interesting and interesting. One of our top concerns is cost. That’s the part that’s kind of not interesting, ’cause it’s always costs. We’re always… But also, and I thought this was, was kind of a new emerging thing, carrier complexity.
The, the challenges of carriers these days. There’s a lot going into that. So- What do you think is driving specifically kind of that focus on both costs and carriers?
[00:03:31] Joe Dieter: Sure. Well, as you said, your team did a lot of, a ton of work on this. You basically surveyed, you spoke with hundreds of shippers, say, “Hey, what is keeping you up at night as we go into the holiday season?
As we go into the most important time of the year, peak season, what are you most concerned about?” As you said, not surprisingly, costs, one of the big concerns, and it’s actually specifically surcharges, which we can get into if you want to. We’ve, like, invented over the past 24 months new types of surcharges every few months in this industry.
And we get why it’s happening, but shippers are feeling the heat.
[00:04:00] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Joe Dieter: The other part of it though that’s connected is managing multiple carriers. So if you’re getting hit with tons of charges from one carrier, and you’re concerned about them being able to have perfect uptime and be reliable during the busiest time of the year, you tend to wanna have other carriers at play too in how you ship, right?
That’s what it means to be ultimately multi-carrier. But there’s a lot of complexity. I think it’s nearly one out of four shippers you spoke with said actually even more than cost, it’s just juggling multiple carriers. I know the smartest way to ship this holiday season is not just to use that big four national carrier I’ve been using the past few years.
I know I need to use other carriers, but to be honest, either I don’t know where to start, or I do know where to start, it looks like way too much work. I don’t know if I can trust some of these exciting new carriers. Like, I’m hearing all these names that they sound like startups. I don’t know, can I depend on them?
[00:04:50] Lori Boyer: Yes, yes.
[00:04:51] Joe Dieter: You know, what, what is a UniUni or a GOFO? These are carriers we love and a lot of our shippers are now using ’cause they’re… which we’re gonna talk about more. But when people hear these names, it’s not UPS, it’s not FedEx. So that, when, when we say multi-carrier complexity is one of the reasons a lot of folks in the ecom world are dealing with migraines over the next few months. We’re starting to get into the reality that today, to ship in a way where you’re gonna save money, and you’re gonna have the fastest time in transit, and you’re not gonna lose a lot of your profit through the holiday season, you can’t just rely on those big nationals? Perhaps.
But okay, so how do you not just rely on the big nationals?
[00:05:28] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:05:29] Joe Dieter: That’s, that’s the big theme we see.
[00:05:32] Lori Boyer: The question. And I, I wanna dive in. You mentioned surcharges. So once upon a time, surcharges were kind of this peak season only thing, and, you know, we, we had our holiday surcharges we expected.
They were kind of similar. The amount of surcharges has gone up dramatically. The types of surcharges things that are happening outside of peak and every carrier has slightly different surcharges. What, I guess, what are we seeing with that? What are we s- how are people managing that?
What, what… Tell us a little bit about the surcharge. Dive into that a little bit more.
[00:06:09] Joe Dieter: People are concerned about cost. They always are, but this year it’s not just paranoia. It’s not just as usual. It’s legitimate. Actually, I’m, I’m gonna grab some notes as we talk through this, ’cause it’s, it’s pretty interesting as you look at it.
So you have one major carrier who added on their demand surcharge. This is kind of their peak season surcharge. It’s 50 cents per package more expensive this year than previously. You have another major carrier who has multiple types of surcharges. Like, one is around dimensions and weight basically.
What does that mean? Well, well- I am gonna ship a box this peak season. That exact same size box last peak season, notably cheaper. In addition, that same carrier added on a notable fuel surcharge, 8% plus, and this is a carrier we love, and most of the world shippers, most of the American shippers will rely on in some capacity.
[00:06:59] Lori Boyer: I wanna, I wanna jump in here and say, you know as followers of Unboxing Logistics, but we are carrier agnostic, I like to say. We love all our carriers. We work with every carrier out there. So this is just kind of what we’re seeing naturally. Love our big four carriers as well, but there are challenges.
So yeah, go ahead.
[00:07:16] Joe Dieter: These are the most popular kids on the block. These are the carriers that everyone wants to work with, needs to work with, needs to rely on. We know them, we love them. They’ve been with us every peak season for decades. But here’s the reality. Shippers are like, “I wanna work with them,” but also, okay, base rates are up 4 to 9% across the major national carriers.
Ground rates are 40% across major national carriers where they were in 2018. So in less than 10 years, we’ve never seen this sort of jump in base rates of what it means to ship a parcel package across the US.
[00:07:44] Lori Boyer: Especially residential, which in the peak season is so rough, but we’re seeing really high residential charges.
[00:07:49] Joe Dieter: On that note, we have new surcharges popping up kind of every few months. We have a res- we have all sorts of residential surcharges, we have oversized package surcharges, we have multiple types of fuel surcharges, we have area surcharges. So like if you ship to a certain area extra fees, and shippers are looking at all this and saying, “I don’t have the room in my wallet, in my bottom line, to continue to roll with these charges.”
So what is the alternative? Another thing that’s happening with the big national carriers is they’re coming out in the press over the past one to two years and saying, “Listen, we’re actually prioritizing more profitable types of shipments like cold chain.” the GLP-1 craze, the pharma the, the increase in a number of pharma-based shipments that need a certain temperature and a certain environment to ship safely, those are very profitable shipments for big carriers to focus on.
So rightfully so, they’re saying, “We’re businesses. We’re intrigued to service more of those more lucrative and higher touch shipments,” like for the GLP-1 craze. What that means, though, is there’s always a trade-off. If some of the big national carriers you relied on as an ecom company during peak are maybe more focused on cold chain in some way, you are not the priority as much anymore.
So for all those awesome ecommerce brands or even those 3PLs that are gonna make the holiday season move literally, they’re the ones that are gonna make sure every- under everyone’s tree, there’s presents. They’re looking and saying, “The big nationals, some of them may not as be as focused on me anymore.”
[00:09:16] Lori Boyer: Exactly.
[00:09:16] Joe Dieter: They’re adding more fees to ship through them. They seem to be prioritizing other types of specialty shipments. So where do I go? What do I do? I need a backup at the very least.
[00:09:28] Lori Boyer: Yeah. And it’s hard though, Joe. I think that sometimes people are surprised by this stat. For enterprise shippers, the majority are using additional carriers outside of the big three.
I think that sometimes people are surprised that even the largest shippers out there are using some of these smaller carriers at times. But people are still a little bit resistant. It, it’s, it feels safer to say to your boss, “Well, I used one of these big carriers, and they messed up,” than, “I used a, a carrier maybe that nobody’s heard of, and they messed up.”
And so, you know, what, do you feel like that expansion to additional carriers is where people expect? Is it further along than people expect? You know, what is the landscape you’re seeing with that?
[00:10:15] Joe Dieter: Yeah. So a study came out, 55% of enterprise retailers, those are the big leading shippers that make peak season run, that make the holiday season happen, those big enterprise retailers, 55% no longer just use big three, big four.
55% have some sort of, we call them a next gen innovative carrier. They’re not that UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, the big ones we all know and rely on. They’re a newer carrier that the vast majority now of the major retailers rely on as part of their multi-carrier mix. And so anytime you have the big enterprise retailers saying, “Listen, we’re not exclusively with the nationals,” something’s happening.
And I think what it is, is they have the data. They’re looking at the dollars and cents, and they’re looking at the average time in transit, and they’re realizing that shipping to certain parts of the country and shipping within especially certain urban zip codes and doing it in a way where the end consumer is delighted and gets their package on time and it’s in good condition, they’re realizing they can no longer can use the big three exclusively.
They’re realizing they’re actually getting a really great setup. They’re getting better rates, faster time in transit, better support, maybe even more days more days of the week can, can experience a good pickup. There’s all the fewer surcharges. There’s all these benefits of this kind of next gen innovative carrier class that the, when you have the biggest enterprise retailers saying, “We’re gonna use them.”
It’s usually an indicator of where the rest of the market’s gonna go. Where the rest of the shipping world is going to go. And these sorts of carriers, let’s, let’s name them out, like the GOFO’s, the UniUni’s, the Veho’s these carriers have grown notably over the past couple years. Our projections are, and we’re seeing specifically from we work, I don’t know if we can say, we work with over 100,000 shippers.
We’ll say that. Over 100,000 shippers rely on EasyPost software to ship during peak. And we see more and more of them by the day bringing in these sorts of carrier names into their peak season carrier mix. And they’re trying to do this right before the holiday season. Cause they’re doing the math, and they’re using our AI to get the projections of like, oh, wow, this new carrier I’ve never heard of or used has a faster time in transit than all the other major ground carriers.
And it’s less surcharge, and it’s just as good coverage across the US if I combine them with, with one of the other new carriers.
[00:12:33] Lori Boyer: I think obviously the natural response for you all out there is like, “Okay, well, I’ll go add some carriers. I’ll put…” It’s complex. You know, it’s exactly what we talked about in the survey, the complexity of just adding a carrier.
How do we know it’s the right carrier? How do you know that it’s going to be cheaper? How do you know it’s gonna be reliable? How do… You know, it’s not just as easy, I think, as just adding a carrier. W- what, how do you, how do you respond to that, you know?
[00:13:03] Joe Dieter: If everyone should be using some of these new carriers in their multi-carrier mix, why isn’t everyone doing it yesterday? Well, historically, to get spun up with a new carrier and say, “Okay, I’m, I’m using carrier A. I wanna try carrier B for part of my shipping volume,” it was a journey. We have shippers come to us and say, “I’ve spent the past several business quarters negotiating with fill-in-the-blank carrier name to try to get the best rates I can.
I feel like they’re still giving me not great of rates. They wanna see proof that I’m gonna ship a ton of volume through them, but, like, I’m a growing seller. I didn’t do a ton of volume last peak, but trust me, I will do a ton of volume this peak. But, like, they’re, they’re not quite there. I’m not getting the right contract in place, and it’s been multiple months.”
I’m also… Or, or they come to us and say, “Hey, I just signed up with two new carriers in addition to my primary carrier. I now have multiple logins. I have multiple billing cycles. I have mul- I’m getting hit with multiple invoices from every angle. I had to hire someone full-time just to manage my carrier relationships, and I still am questioning if I actually got really good rate discounts or not.”
So the, this is not uncommon. This is usually what it meant to be a multi-carrier shipper. It was kind of a privilege, and usually you had to be a really big company to even have the overhead and bandwidth and time in the day to get a really awesome contract in place with multiple carriers, especially if you’re dealing with big national carriers.
These are the ones that the wor- all the world wants to ship through, all the, all the US wants to ship through. They’re high in demand. They don’t need you, growing retailer.
[00:14:26] Lori Boyer: Sadly, I need you. But they, Joe needs you, but yeah.
[00:14:31] Joe Dieter: So i- in terms of the pain point, and this gets into, Lori, which we’ve talked about before, what does it mean to go direct to a carrier and start that relationship as a shipper?
If you’re not one of the biggest brands and sellers in the world, it means buckle up ’cause this may turn into a near full-time job over the next few weeks or months. And so here we are going into the fall. We’re, we’re on the brink of peak, and a lot of shippers, I think we’ve seen 7 out of 10 shippers say, “I don’t have a multi-carrier backup plan.
Like I, I have a primary carrier. I know I need others. I I don’t have that backup plan,” 7 out of 10 shippers. And the real thing is that they’re looking and saying, “I don’t have time to engage in that process of reaching out to maybe a UniUni or even reaching out to FedEx and changing my contract and changing my setup.
It seems daunting. I assume I’m too late. I assume I don’t even get to be a savvy multi-carrier.”
[00:15:23] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I- that was one of the things in our, our survey that really surprised me was a really, you know, two out of three shippers had no contingency plan tested. Even our larger ones did not necessarily have, you know, if a problem went down with their carrier, what were they gonna do?
Had they tested out this contingency? It- so as you were saying, do you think it’s just they don’t have time? They don’t have, you know, the means? What, what, why is there this gap?
[00:15:55] Joe Dieter: Right. Well, there, there’s several things, right? Like what goes into time, then what goes into did you get the right contract?
Did you get the r- did you get the right agreement in place with those carriers? Shippers will come to us and say, “Well, here’s how much I’m paying for blank carrier. Is, is that a good rate?” And we’re like, “Ah, it’s actually pretty close to what we call retail.” Actually, you pretty much got the starting point.
So you were not able to negotiate, have a conversation to explain why you are in a situation where you should be getting certain discounts. We at Easy, at EasyPost we have something called EasyPost Wallet, and this is how you get access to those big national carriers everyone wants to work with, as well as some of these new innovative carriers.
And the key with EasyPost Wallet, the reason we created it, is we had so many shippers that came to us and said, “Hey within the next few weeks, I need to be up and running with these two carriers. I’ve never spoken with them. I don’t have a ton of historical volume to get really great rates. Can you help me?”
So we created the EasyPost Wallet program to make sure you could come to us right on the brink of peak season, like now. And rather than spending months in negotiation just to get kind of a discount and get up and running, rather than spending months trying to test, the other thing is, okay, you get a great agreement, a contract in place.
Have you tested whether or not that carrier and that service level works well at scale? A lot of folks go into peak season, they have a new carrier, and then things go down. The system doesn’t work well with that new carrier. They didn’t accurately test and ramp up. They hit incredible volumes in online sales, and then everything’s piled up against a brick wall in some warehouse, and they realize we didn’t have the right fully ready-to-go setup with those new carriers.
So Wallet also cuts through that. We have shippers that come to us in a matter of days, they’re up and running with multiple carriers, and they’re getting great discounts. We have up to 88% discounts on certain service levels through Wallet.
[00:17:46] Lori Boyer: So you’re mentioning discounts and service levels. I want some of our audience out there, Joe, that I speak with are kind of these smaller shippers, the ones you’re talking about maybe haven’t done as much. Can you even kind of back up and be really basic for a minute? Like, what is a retail rate versus, like, the discounted rates? What, what does it mean when you say, “Oh, you’ve got a retail rate”?
[00:18:03] Joe Dieter: Yeah, sure. So how much are you paying to ship a package through a UPS, a FedEx, a GOFO, a UniUni?
When you first come to these carriers directly as a shipper and you express interest in using them, you are going to get certain rates, and you’re gonna start having conversations about what are you ultimately gonna pay them to ship. When we think of retail rates, we think of rates where you’re not getting a ton of discounts.
Now, most shippers are not a Fortune 50 online brand or seller. You know, most shippers are not fill-in-the-blank incredible retail brand. So they come to these carriers and say, “Hey, I want an awesome discount. I’m gonna ship a ton of volume through you,” and that’s a back-and-forth conversation. If you don’t have historical volumes where, “Hey, look at the past three holiday seasons, I’ve shipped this many million packages to these parts of the globe.
I’m now gonna use you to do 70% of that. What do you say about giving me X amount of volume discount?” That conversation is not easy for most shippers ’cause they don’t have five consecutive peak seasons of incredible volume. They’re not a reliable, great customer for a carrier.
[00:19:12] Lori Boyer: So your discount is really low, but then in using the Wallet, EasyPost has then basically negotiated that discount using the massive volume we have through all our, our shippers, right?
[00:19:23] Joe Dieter: Our main thing of why we exist from the beginning was we connected the world’s shippers with all the world’s carriers, and through that process, we saw how all the carriers shipped. We had the data. We, we noticed what carriers did an awesome job working with what types of shippers and delivered on-time transit and delivered within reasonable costs.
And so we, we started seeing what carriers and service levels work really well, then we created a unique partnership with those carriers and service levels, and we got awesome discount of rates across those carriers and service levels. So you can be a shipper that comes to us. It doesn’t matter how big you are.
It doesn’t matter how, what kind of track record you have of shipping. You can come to us and get access to the type of rates that much larger shippers would’ve fought hard to get, because we’re the one that have the relationship with those carriers.
[00:20:10] Lori Boyer: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s fantastic. I, I love that explanation.
That’s perfect. So, you know, we have what we say Wallet carriers. Okay? So these are some of these ones who have really great discounted rates. So let’s say that somebody has gone and turned on Wallet carriers. They- they’ve added them. How do they know which, ’cause there’s multiple Wallet carriers in there, including the big ones.
Right. How do they decide which carrier to use for which packages?
[00:20:39] Joe Dieter: Sure. We have something called Luma AI. You’re familiar with.
[00:20:41] Lori Boyer: Mm-hmm. I love AI, especially Luma AI.
[00:20:44] Joe Dieter: So we used to say something like rate logic or kind of an industry term, but now we just say, “Oh, it’s Luma AI.” If you wanna know how to get the best label every time, if you wanna know the ideal carrier and service level for every type of shipment, we now of course, in 2026, we have an AI that has seen over billions of historical shipments and knows, okay, you’re this type of shipper shipping this type of package to this part of the country.
According to our data, the best cost, the best time in transit is gonna be this exact carrier and service level.
[00:21:12] Lori Boyer: It’s so cool. I just had to say, I’m gonna geek out. Joe’s gonna be embarrassed by me, but AI has its uses, and a lot of times is not used well. But of all the things, y’all, we have so much data, and to be able to use AI to figure out just exactly what Joe’s saying, which carrier for which package in which route and which service level makes the most sense for you.
I, I mean, that is freaking cool. That’s just awesome. Also, I wanna say Luma AI is part of EasyPost. Right? It’s not like an add-on. Like, EasyPost is built and functioning, powered by we like to say, the AI. Is that right? You’re not going and, and paying an extra service to have Luma AI.
[00:22:02] Joe Dieter: Yes, and, and even right now, across the weeks ahead, for free, you’ll get perhaps the most valuable insight you could have with Luma AI.
You’ll be able to get an estimate of how much money you could save if you started using different carriers and service levels than you currently are. And it’s the perfect time right, right before peak to just say, “Hey, hey, Luma. Hey, all-knowing shipping advisor.” “ here’s what I’m doing right now. Give me a quick reaction of maybe the ballpark of how much money I could be saving across the holiday season ahead if I use different carriers and service levels.”
Luma right now is uncovering over $50 million in untapped savings across some of the shippers who use, use us. Over $50 million in savings. Luma has, for one particular seller, recently saved them a couple million dollars and prevented over 200,000 late deliveries. And, by the way, just switching service levels within the existing carrier they were using.
It wasn’t-
[00:22:54] Lori Boyer: That’s, isn’t that crazy? They didn’t even switch carriers. It was simply service level switching.
[00:22:59] Joe Dieter: You’re losing millions of dollars, and two, I think it was over 270,000 customers are unhappy getting late deliveries simply ’cause you chose the wrong service level.
[00:23:08] Lori Boyer: Okay, I geeked us out too much.
We, we took a little pivot towards AI, ’cause you all know how much I love AI. We can talk later. Let’s focus back a little bit on these Wallet carriers. There’s a few that you’ve mentioned. So historically, those of you who, you know, are EasyPost customers are already familiar with Wallet know we’ve had, you know, certain Wallet carriers for some time.
But exciting news is that for this peak season, we are adding some additional Wallet carriers, and, and they’re some of the ones that you kinda mentioned. So I would love to hear a little bit about those what’s coming up, who they are. Do you wanna introduce us to those?
[00:23:45] Joe Dieter: Yeah, absolutely. So Wallet, historically, you had the big national carriers, USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, Canada Post.
Those are still within Wallet, and a lot of people using Wallet are relying on those big carriers we love. We now, in the weeks ahead here in the fall we have GOFO, UniUni, and Veho coming into Wallet. Now, w- why would we add in these newcomers into this mix of the prestigious big nationals? Part of it is we had so many shippers that are saying, “Hey, I wanna use GOFO.
I wanna use UniUni. I wanna use Veho during the holiday season.” Like, well, tell us more. We noticed shippers were actually combining GOFO and UniUni to ship ground across major urban markets. And what they were noticing is that they were getting better time in transit. With GOFO, we’ve had reports of 2.7 days on average ground transit if you’re shipping within certain cities.
Why does that matter? Well, that average ground transit compared to most of the major ground carriers is quite quick. That’s how I’ll put it. It’s very quick. It almost is like expedited shipping in some ways. They’re also noticing better rates and fewer surcharges, suspiciously. Way less surcharges on the invoice when they started using these other carriers.
Some folks have also said they really feel like they’re getting awesome support. They feel like they have a little bit more accessibility and can reach out to a human as they work with some of these newer carriers. And so people are getting creative and saying, “Hey, we’re actually combining GOFO and UniUni, and they have replaced or they have taken all of our ground shipping volume, which is the majority of what we’re gonna ship over the next few and most important months of the year.”
So we’re like, “Interesting.” And they’re like, “Yeah, you, you guys need them ASAP.” “You, you guys need to work with them ASAP. And they need to be within Wallet so we have that simplified billing, invoice, and experience.” People wanna be able to put funds in their EasyPost Wallet, and those funds are able to be used for all the rate, all the rate shopping across all those carriers.
[00:25:43] Lori Boyer: Great point. We didn’t quite explain how and why it’s Wallet. So Wallet is not just, oh, a discounted carrier. Explain a little bit more about what Wallet is specifically. How that works. If I’m a shipper, let’s say I’m hopping in- Yeah … What would it mean?
[00:25:57] Joe Dieter: We call it Wallet because what you really want, what we hear is, is a really big headache, is I’m using multiple carriers, but now I just want one centralized way to get billed, get invoiced, and to pay as I generate labels across multiple carriers.
I’m tired of having three different logins and three different types of invoices to deal with, and I have different people in my company or my team that have access to each of those different carriers. It’s a nightmare. I could be getting over- overcharged on my, on my bills. There’s no way to know. If I just had one centralized wallet that I could make sure money’s in it, and I can just start shipping.
I use Luma AI, make sure I’m getting the, that right label every time across multiple carriers. EasyPost Wallet is that way in a matter of minutes, in some cases not even days. In a matter of minutes, I am u- up, I’m running, I’m ready to go, and my wallet is fully funded, so I can be a savvy multi-carrier shipper.
Now I can ship as if I was a big Fortune 50 retailer, even though I am anything but. I’m a small new seller, and it’s a scary holiday.
[00:26:59] Lori Boyer: Awesome. So let’s say they’ve signed in, they’re using Wallet. We got these new exciting carriers, which again, I love that you pointed out these carriers have been added because of customer requests as well as just data. You know, as we start to see our Luma AI is recommending these kind of carriers more and more, then we think, “Okay, may- maybe it’s time to add them to the Wallet.” So let’s start with GOFO. I wanna talk about each one individually. I wanna know kind of a little bit about them and really who of my, my shippers out there listening might be the best fit for each one.
So let’s start with GOFO.
[00:27:32] Joe Dieter: So GOFO is this company that’s newer to us by standards, but they’re a newer carrier that has taken the US by storm. Okay, so 75% of the US is reached through GOFO. It’s 98.5%. Let me… yeah, 98.5% on time. What we’re hearing, if you’re a mid-market to enterprise D2C commerce brand or you’re a 3PL, let’s say you’re doing over 10,000 shipments a month up to millions of shipments per month, and you’re shipping within the major urban markets of the US throughout the holiday season, throughout the last few months of the year, one of the best decisions you could possibly make is going to be to do some of that ground shipping through GOFO, is the best way I can put it.
Now do you have to be exactly that sort of shipper, that size? And not necessarily, but the ones that are seeing the biggest savings and are really enjoying that quick 2.7-day average transit through GOFO the ones that are putting a lot of their ground volume into GOFO are in that segment. The costs, the speed, the ri- the reliability, the under three-day transit averages those are things that are really, really hard to find for the rate you’re gonna get with GOFO.
UniUni-
[00:28:47] Lori Boyer: Oh, yeah. I love UniUni. I wanna say we’ve had UniUni on the pod before. You’ve all seen them on a Meet the Carriers. They’re such a fun carrier. I also think, if I remember right, and you can correct me, they have some great lack of surcharges.
[00:29:03] Joe Dieter: They do.
[00:29:04] Lori Boyer: Right? I, I think they don’t have residential. I, d- fuel.
[00:29:08] Joe Dieter: Fuel. Delivery area, residential surcharges, you will not see those with UniUni.
[00:29:12] Lori Boyer: Those big ones that we’re really struggling with. Some, those residential, those, you know, your area. So th- those are really great advantages of UniUni. What else can you tell us about UniUni?
[00:29:21] Joe Dieter: Yeah, so apparel, footwear, cosmetics, some of the biggest, biggest shippers during the last few months of the year, a lot of them are saying, “Hey, what is the lowest cost ground option I can get when shipping within certain markets?”
UniUni is turning out to be the answer to that for these sorts of shippers. Again, they love the, the no surcharges. A one to seven-day transit is this flexibility that certain shippers just don’t see maybe with larger national carriers. They’re also 98% on time. And then, yeah, 65% US coverage. But the sneaky, the kind of the sneaky insight we see is the savviest shippers we work with that are about to save a lot of money on ground shipping, they’re combining GOFO and UniUni and getting-
[00:30:05] Lori Boyer: That’s super interesting
[00:30:06] Joe Dieter: total United States coverage.
[00:30:08] Lori Boyer: Yeah, really cool.
[00:30:09] Joe Dieter: So those two match the coverage you would get through one of a, the big ground carriers.
[00:30:15] Lori Boyer: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:16] Joe Dieter: And they’re like, “And I’m also paying less money, and I’m getting- Yeah … better time of transit.”
[00:30:19] Lori Boyer: And like you said earlier, Joe, the focus on them, you know, these shippers, especially during peak, who are sending holiday-type gifts.
These are the kind of carriers where you are their priority. You are their focus. Our, our big carriers, they still love you, but yeah, they are kind of moving into the slightly more profitable for them kind of markets, which isn’t residential a lot of the time.
[00:30:43] Joe Dieter: Yeah. No, absolutely. We another one we’re adding is of course Veho, and we don’t wanna leave them out as well, but and, and so maybe, maybe even I’ll, I’ll get to come back and talk more about Veho as we have more shippers. But I would say GOFO and UniUni are we have a list that grows by the day of shippers that rely on EasyPost. And they’re a powerhouse combo putting them together, and yeah, Veho is wonderful as well. I believe they have no residential surcharges.
[00:31:14] Lori Boyer: I think that they, let me see my notes here I think that they also ship seven days a week, and so, yeah. Fantastic, and we, we definitely have a growing audience who is being recommended to use Veho as well. So let’s say, who of our listeners out there are, are gonna be best served by kind of looking into some of these new carriers?
[00:31:40] Joe Dieter: Yeah. Shippers of any size, whether you’re SMB, mid-market enterprise, should reevaluate your carrier mix as you go into the holiday season, right? So as we’re going into the last few months, look and say, “Who is every carrier service level I use?” And y- you’d be surprised how many shippers would say, “Well, there’s actually only one carrier I’m still using.”
So first off, become multi-carrier if you wanna save the most amount of money, get the best time in transit not lose a ton of profit you’re about to make across holiday season. Like, go multi-carrier if you wanna do those things.
[00:32:11] Lori Boyer: And don’t feel bad if you are still doing the single carrier. I can tell you, Joe can tell you, there are many shippers out there who are in your shoes Yep and feeling bad of like, that little guilt of like, “I know I should be doing this.” Yeah, you’re not alone. But it is time. Yeah. It is time to make that move.
[00:32:28] Joe Dieter: Yeah, there, there’s incredible brands that come to us that we realize are using one carrier.
[00:32:33] Lori Boyer: It just seems.
[00:32:34] Joe Dieter: And we’re amazed …
[00:32:35] Lori Boyer: Amazing in this day.
[00:32:36] Joe Dieter: The people that are going into the future, and they’re about to save a lot of money this holiday season, are getting more diversified than ever. What that means is they’re, to them, it may be even risky. “Ah, I was using fill in the blank big national carrier the past five holiday seasons, and I’m scared I’m gonna take the leap, but I know I’m about to save maybe millions of dollars and have much happier customers this holiday season if I add in this exciting new carrier.
I don’t know how to pronounce their name, but I’ll add ’em in because the data, the AI, is telling me it’s time. It’s time to gr- to step into the future and maybe diversify my multi-carrier mix.” and so to answer your question, any shipper of any size should look at this. The mid-market to enterprise shippers, what does that mean?
Well, you’re doing over 10,000 transactions a month. Maybe you’re even doing hundreds of thousands to millions of shipments a day. You absolutely, table stakes, have to be looking at becoming a savvy multi-carrier that’s not just relying on your own instinct and math from someone on your team, but to l- that’s leveraging a reliable AI that’s able to say, “No, I’ve, I’ve looked at billions of historical deliveries across all these carriers.
I can tell you you exactly need to be using X, Y, Z carriers and A, B, C service levels for these exact type of packages.” That’s the, the shippers that are looking like rock stars within their company, the logistics and supply chain professionals that are, you know, getting promotions and looking like rock stars in their company, they’re using the latest tools to have the ultimate shipping operation, the ultimate carrier mix.
They’re also realizing no matter how fancy of a brand they are, they don’t have leverage at the table to only use one carrier and have it go swimmingly well during peak. They’re realizing, “If I’m gonna avoid peak volume constraints, if I’m gonna avoid a huge, you know, downtime situation and making all my consumers happy and getting packages quick, I can’t be overly reliant on one player.”
Even if you love them, even if they’ve been awesome, it’s no longer the way the world works. Everyone needs a helping hand. Everyone needs a backup. You gotta go multi-carrier.
[00:34:45] Lori Boyer: I do wanna ask here, I mean, let’s talk timing.
[00:34:48] Joe Dieter: Yep.
[00:34:48] Lori Boyer: Right? So let’s say somebody’s listening, it’s September. Maybe they didn’t even see this till October.
Right? Adding carriers during peak. Do it? Don’t do it? Risky? Not risky? You know, what do you see the other shippers do and don’t do?
[00:35:06] Joe Dieter: Sure. This is why we released EasyPost Wallet, right? The fastest way to get up and running during peak season, or hopefully right before peak season, you’re prepared-
[00:35:15] Lori Boyer: I was gonna say, we, we still are advocates of preparing Yeah in advance, but …
[00:35:19] Joe Dieter: Through EasyPost Wallet, it could be a matter of clicks. Depending on the carrier and service level, it could be a matter of minutes, where you feel like you’re practically up and running. You have the right rates in place. You’re ready to go. Just fund your Wallet. Now, every shipper is different, and every carrier is different, so there may be certain shippers who wanna work with certain Wallet carriers, and it’s gonna take a bit of time, a few days.
What we can say is it’s going to be the fastest, most seamless experience through Wallet versus if you went direct to them at this time of the year. We’re right on the brink of going into the fall. Most shippers look and say, “The, the boat passed. I don’t have time to even think about my carrier mix.
I’m too late. Dang. I’m about to lose a ton of money this holiday season. I can tell.” Like, don’t get into that negative thought cycle. You do have time. We even have sizable brands, you’d be surprised, really large retailers that are switching over to GOFO, Union, Veho as we speak, and they’re confidently doing that as they know they’ll be up and running and ready to go through EasyPost.
[00:36:20] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I think it’s so important with flexibility, with being resilient, is that ability to kind of switch and not lock yourself in and say, “Well, it’s now September. It’s now October. I am not gonna make any changes.” there, there are ways to do it, and, and I o- absolutely recommend always when you’re adding a carrier, obviously you’re not gonna shift all your volume to it.
You know, do some little testing, and start it out with a lane or two. Start it out with 10%. Do, do something small and, and get those testing going. That’s kind of that that backup contingency plan that we sort of talk about in general. It never hurts. You can start it at any time and kind of see where you’re at.
So I totally am on board with doing a little testing, even throughout peak. That, that’s part of the kind of resilience we have. Well, Joe, this has been so fun. I love talking about carriers. I love helping shippers find the right carrier for your specific needs because it is completely different, you know?
And there are times when it’s gonna be one of those big carriers is perfect, and there are times when it’s gonna be one of these other exciting, new, innovative carriers. It, it’s that mix that really is the future. So Joe, if there was something, one takeaway, one thing you want our shippers to remember from today, what would that be?
[00:37:42] Joe Dieter: Reevaluate what carriers you’re using during the most important time of the year. It’s, it’s now. Now is the time you need to evaluate. This’ll be your last shot before you go into the next few months, and then you look in January, February, March at how much money did I actually take home in my pocket after all those awesome holiday sales?
Now is the time to evaluate the precise carrier mix you can put in place to get the best time, the best time in transit, to get the best rates, to get the best support, to have fewer surcharges. It’s gonna be within within the fall here that you wanna do that. And EasyPost is gonna be the way that you get up and running fast as you make those decisions specifically through our, our Wallet program. So-
[00:38:29] Lori Boyer: I love it. I’m, I’m gonna challenge you. Put a time on your calendar right now. I want you to message me on LinkedIn. I want you to message me somewhere. Tell me you’ve put a little time on your calendar to kind of review your carriers, look at your carrier mix, look at, at Wallet, especially if you’re already an EasyPost customer.
Check out those new carriers that we’ve got there in Wallet. Just take a, a little bit of time and, and do… Just putting it on your calendar’s gonna make you feel so much better, and you’re gonna perform so much better, as you said. And I hope that we all get massive raises, massive shout-outs come January, because you were so successful in the way you you set up your carrier mix.
Joe, thanks so much for being here. This was awesome. I’m sure we’ll have you again soon to hear about new, exciting things in the, in the product land here at EasyPost. It’s been fantastic.
[00:39:22] Joe Dieter: No, thanks, Lori. It was fun.
[00:39:24] Lori Boyer: We’ll see you all next time.
