UPS announced that it expects to hire between 90,000 and 95,000 seasonal employees to support the anticipated holiday surge in package deliveries that will begin in October and continue through January 2015.
Last year, all carriers were swamped with orders, many at the last minute, and many deliveries were made after the holidays.
UPS will follow the lead of its rival FedEx in adopting dimensional weight pricing for all of its ground services, as well as UPS Standard services to Canada, beginning Dec. 29, 2014.
Online shoppers want retailers to make it easier to purchase their goods and services. Consumers also want websites and stores to work better together. For now, they also prefer to evaluate and purchase products from their desktops rather than their mobile devices, and when it comes to shipping and returns "free" is a driving factor to complete the sale. These and other findings appear in the third annual UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, conducted earlier this year by comScore.
What has been the impact of cloud technology on the supply chain and logistics industry? Tom Boike, vice president of supplier management with UPS, offers a perspective.
A shift is underway for distributors of industrial supplies and the e-commerce experience they provide to their customers. In 2013, more than 63 percent of industrial supply buyers said they made purchases online, with half of those purchasers spending at least 50 percent of their annual budget with suppliers who have an e-commerce platform.
A designer and developer of colorful cases and covers for cell phones and other wireless devices found that its warehousing and distribution model was old hat. A new logistics services partner brought a new look to things.
