Sent Items #173: Sunday, December 22, 2024

Last week I said it would likely be my final issue of the year. But I like writing too much so here we are. Issue #173 …. the 26th and final one of the year! Remarkably in the 5 days since I posted the Postal Service’s running tally of mail and packages delivered, they have delivered 2 BILLION more! Your peak is nothing in comparison 🙂 

Something I’m not sure if I’m proud of or shocked by, but here is a chart of my Amazon orders going back 19 years to 2006, which appears to be the first year I place an order on Amazon (I was in college in Canada). I have placed 318 orders on Amazon so far this year. I suspect when all is said and done I’ll wind up around 325.

Not quite sure what led to the massive uptick in orders starting in 2017/2018. Only thing I can attribute it to was starting my own business and working from home. In 2020 was COVID and I bought a house for the first time.

I posted this on LinkedIn last night (link). I know, posting on LinkedIn the Saturday right before Christmas is probably not peak engagement, but 🤷‍♂️. I’ve had 90 comments overnight. Please share your thoughts on your favorite logistics platforms/software!

Okay this will be the final time you hear from me this year (unless you hit reply to chat). Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, Happy everything!

Vietnam Won Big in Donald Trump’s First Trade War. Now, It’s a Target. (link)

• Vietnam became a magnet for Chinese manufacturers looking for a production base from which to ship their goods to the U.S. tariff-free. Trump and his team are signaling that they intend to slam this backdoor shut. Such a move would hurt Vietnam’s small but rapidly growing economy, and likely mean higher prices for U.S. consumers who buy Vietnamese goods and U.S. companies supplied by Vietnamese factories. Since Trump placed tariffs on Chinese goods six years ago, Vietnam has expanded around 8% a year

• The country now supplies a third of the sports shoes, half of the wooden beds and dining tables, and a quarter of the solar cells imported by the U.S. Outside its capital Hanoi, once-sleepy northern provinces have been turned into export powerhouses, with rice paddies giving way to hulking billion-dollar factories assembling smartphones and semiconductors.

• Vietnam exports to the U.S. nine times as much as what it imports from the country, putting it fourth behind China, Mexico and the European Union for U.S.’s biggest bilateral trade deficits.

UPS to hike SurePost rates, delivery area surcharges (link)

• The popular UPS service will see higher increases compared to last year as it navigates higher demand and changes at the Postal Service, which it often relies on.

• SurePost is typically used as a cost-effective shipping method for non-urgent, lightweight home deliveries. Higher SurePost demand from e-commerce shippers drove a 15.4% year-over-year increase in Q3 for UPS’ ground residential volume, according to the company’s quarterly report.

• Next year, the Postal Service will no longer offer contracted rate discounts for delivery unit entry and plans to hike rates by 10.3% for Parcel Select shipments entered at those facilities.

• My friend Rick Watson also had a great post on the topic (link).

FedEx Shares Jump on Plan to Spin Off Freight Trucking Division (link)

• has decided to spin off its freight trucking division, moving to streamline its structure and unlock value that some shareholders argue has been lost inside the delivery giant.

• The division had more than $9 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year, was the most profitable unit (albeit smallest), and some believe the unit could be worth much more as a stand-alone public company. FedEx, which has $88 billion in total annual revenue, sported a market value below $70 billion as of Wednesday. Old Dominion, which counts about $6 billion in revenue and is second to FedEx in its sector, is worth about $40 billion.

• FedEx is also in the process of combining Ground and Express operations in a multiyear restructuring. They are chewing on a lot at the moment.

• Interestingly, this article was written the night of the announcement when the stock had jumped over 10%. When the stock closed for trading the following day, it had closed back to where it started the prior day… flat (see 5 day chart below). Seems like the market is concerned about this news.

I wrote about this last week (link) with respect to parcel insurance checkout “add-ons”, and how Shopify is putting an end to the default opt-in, but I’ve been fascinated by “platform risk” that is impacting certain sectors and software companies that ride on the coattails of much larger platforms (e.g. TikTok, Meta, Google, Shopify, Amazon, X, OpenAI) My friend Josh Payne had an interesting post on the topic (link). This is not just an Amazon or Google or Shopify thing…this is every platform creating rules that are in their best interest (and rightly so!). Just another risk to be aware of as you grow and scale your business.

Enjoy the final week of the year!

- Matt

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