UPS is answering the call for speedier e-commerce deliveries.
The parcel provider is rolling out Saturday pickup services and ground delivery for the first time. The new service will allow commercial and residential recipients to receive ground packages on Saturday rather than Monday, cutting out critical delivery time and positioning the company to compete with rivals.
FedEx already offers home delivery on Saturdays as does the United States Postal Service, which also delivers Amazon packages on Sundays. The extended delivery periods allows each to handle the growing B2C demands, which account for 52.1 percent of the total volume of packages delivered in the U.S., up from 43.7 percent in 2010.
For online retailers, Saturday pick-ups will allow them to achieve Monday deliveries for most U.S. consumers, which could result in a boost to e-commerce sales. According to the UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper Survey, retailers said that nearly half (46 percent) of customers abandon a shopping cart due to estimated shipping date and 62 percent of shoppers select ground delivery.
As one of the largest delivery timeframe improvements in UPS’s 109-year-history, the company expects to add more than 6,000 new jobs nationwide when operations are fully implemented by the end of 2018.
In 2016, UPS piloted the Saturday delivery service in three major cities, including Atlanta, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. This month, UPS is expanding its Saturday delivery service to 15 additional metro areas, including Boston, Chicago and New York. By November, which will be the start of the holiday shipping season, UPS projects that the Saturday delivery service will be available in approximately 4,700 cities and towns in the U.S. Next year, UPS’ Saturday delivery service will reach more than 5,800 areas nationwide.
UPS shipping systems, including UPS WorldShip and ups.com, will also be updated accordingly as the Saturday delivery service is implemented over the next few months.
“The addition of another ground operations day more efficiently utilizes our existing delivery network and offers customers an even faster ground delivery solution,” UPS chief marketing officer Teresa Finley said. “We are confident that it will help our customers capture market growth.”