FedEx forecasts earlier peak for 2012 festive shipping
FedEx has suggested that its busiest day ahead of this year’s Christmas holiday will come two days earlier than last year’s peak. The US integrator has seen its peak drift forward by a day per year since 2008’s busiest day on 15th December.
But this year, it is betting that the top daily volume will occur two days earlier than last year’s 12th December peak.
The company believes Monday 10th December will see 19m shipments move through its global ground, express and freight network.
This would be 2m more items than seen on last year’s bust day for FedEx, continuing a general 10% year-on-year increase driven in large part by online shopping.
This year’s predicted busiest day is known as “Green Monday” in US ecommerce circles, the term that ecommerce marketplace eBay coined for its busiest December sales day, usually the second Monday in the month and the start of the heaviest online shopping week of the year.
FedEx said today that US consumers spent $1.1bn on Green Monday last year.
The Memphis-based company said for the holiday season as a whole, which takes in Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States, it is expecting more than 280m shipments moving through its worldwide networks, a 13% increase on the 247m seen last year (which was slightly down on last year’s prediction of a 260m volume).
As with last year, FedEx is planning to add 20,000 additional seasonal staff to help cope with the extra parcel volumes this year.
“Strength”
Frederick W Smith, the FedEx founder and chairman, said: “The continued trend toward record peak volumes is a testament to the strength, speed and reliability of the FedEx Ground and FedEx SmartPost networks.
“FedEx team members from around the globe, 300,000 strong, are prepared to help drive commerce during the busy holiday season and beyond.”
Propelled by ecommerce, FedEx Ground and FedEx SmartPost – the latter being a service run with the US Postal Service providing last-mile delivery – have been helping to drive profits at FedEx, particularly as its Express division has suffered from the turgid global economy.
SmartPost saw an 18% increase in its daily volumes in the company’s fiscal year 2012, averaging 1.7m packages a day.
Predictions for the US as a whole are for a 4.1% increase in holiday season sales, to $586.1bn, according to the National Retail Federation. Analysts at comScore say 10% of US consumer spending is now through online channels.
