Hi,
In less than 2 weeks, UPS workers could strike. I’m an FBA seller who ship almost half of my inventory SPD through UPS. Too bad Amazon didn’t renew the contract with FedEx a few years ago. Their rate was lower than UPS. Anyhow I wonder how you guys prepare for it. I plan to ship enough to Amazon to last 60 days. I’m expecting that they would have an agreement and things go back to normal by that time. What do you guys think?
I mainly use UPS to ship inventory to amazon, as their carrier preference. I’m going to let amazon figure out if they want us to use another provider. If things grind to a halt and amazon can’t get sellers to stock FC’s I’m sure money will fix the problem for me.
We went through this in the 90’s. It does not happen very often and may not happen this time.
Talking with our driver every day, he does not think it will happen, but he also said we would know well before he did. He also added that many UPS drivers are taking holiday starting the end of this month, close to August 1st. The reason, if they are on holiday they get paid. If they strike, starting August 1 (the only day of the year they can strike) they can not file for vacation.
Ours is again spending time in the Lakes Region of our great state. Note to self, get him some passes to the local arcade in the town he holidays in.
100% FBM and any orders going out now I will be using USPS Priority instead of UPS Ground.
I appreciate that labor wants improvements, but I can’t completely agree with decimating commerce to do it.
Both sides need to be negotiating in good faith and be able to compromise… which we all know seems to be nearly impossible these days for people on opposite sides.
I am really hoping Amazon strikes up a deal with Fedex again, I have always felt like UPS kicks around my packages. Knowing Amazon though this would probably happen 2 weeks after the strike is over. I will most likely resort to using non partnered carriers for strike and hope they can semi handle the influx.
Thanks for your reply. My laziness is telling me to just wait for Amazon to figure things out but my paranoid side is also telling me to do something. Frankly I’m surprised that Amazon still hasn’t come up with a workaround.
Do we have any other choice? In the past, we had FedEx and UPS. It’s been a while since UPS is our only choice 
So thoughtful, it’s the little things that mean so much! 
I’m FBM (not FBA), I remember the last UPS strike. Managers, etc. were out say & night picking up and making deliveries. It wasn’t a total shutdown, but it did slow things down and things were awkward. Fedex prior to the strike had about 50% of our shipping. FedEx as @Image remembers throttled their customers. In our case, they throttled us back to half of our normal shipping and would only accept packages every other day (even at their hub over an hours drive away). We ended up shipping more volume via UPS during the strike than with FedEx, because of the effort by UPS managers (No joke, we actually waited one night until 3:00am for a UPS manager to make deliveries and pickup packages in a 32 foot pup) . On Thursday the 27th. I’ll set my inventory to zero and put my account into vacation mode. If the strike actually occurs, I may never take it back out of vacation mode.
I think the Teamster bosses are it seems determined (I’ll say no more due to forum policy, other than look at Yellow, look at UPS use a calculator)
Thanks for your reply.
63% of your 100% target inventory? That’s great! How long would the sales sustain when you stock 100%? 30 days? 60 days?
I’ve heard other sellers do combo FBA/FBM. Does doing FBM through 3PL still yield a nice profit compared to FBA?
Totally agree. Shipping FedEx through Walmart is considerably cheaper shipping UPS through Amazon. We can’t use Walmart FedEx shipping to send inventory to Amazon, can we?
Huh? Amazon has a way to interfere this? Could you share the info on how to use FBM discounted shipping in a smart way?
Sorry for my questions. You posses a great source of information 
How much more expensive using USPS Priority compared to UPS ground? 10% more? 20%?
I think he means for awhile ups was shipping cheaper then usps this happened for a few weeks. I noticed it was under $4 for me to ship ups for a 3oz package when usps wanted like 20 cents more. I wasn’t about to save 20 cents and risk my little tiny items blowing away or getting misplaced. For that .20 cent difference I liked the security of being put into a mailbox.
Now I’m sure people shipping larger packages probably got a real good deal. If it was as cheap to ship ups as it was to ship ups into fba I’m assuming it was like $5 for a 2lb box? But I have not seen the cheaper than first class ups option now in awhile. No idea if it was test or some sort? Maybe Amazon trying to see just how much packages if they did their own rates? 
I’m with you on hoping that Amazon would strike up a deal with FedEx again. They’re quite a bit cheaper than UPS.
Does Amazon have a record of doing this (let the problem lingers for a few weeks before doing something)?
Which one would you use? I don’t like the idea of stocking up too much at Amazon. It hurts the IPI score and a waste of storage fee. Please advise.
Thank you for your reply.
Is FBM more profitable than FBA? Just curious, why not use FBA? It’s a lot more convenience and scalable.
Wow 
Hmm… if the strike could cause a major disruption to a pro FBM seller like you, wouldn’t you think this could be an opportunity to sell through FBA and pick up all the slack of FBM sellers who have to go on vacation during the strike? Maybe you could make some extra sales there
If UPS does strike, we would likely start to see shipping/delivery delays, especially with USPS, and depending on how long it lasts an increase in lost and misplaced packages.
Possible supply chain disruptions could have an effect on retail delivery with more out-of-stock items and a possible increase in prices for high-demand/out-of-stock items.
IMO, If the strike happens, I don’t see it lasting very long, not enough to have a major impact.
From Forbes:
24%. That’s UPS’ market share in the U.S. parcel shipping market as of 2022 based on parcel volume, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. That makes it second only to the U.S. Postal Service with 32% and just ahead of Amazon (23%). UPS delivered 5.2 billion packages in 2022—out of 21.2 billion packages across all companies—and 162 packages were shipped across all companies per U.S. household on average.
UPS’ agreement with the Teamsters is the largest private-sector union agreement in the U.S., according to Bloomberg and the company is the single largest employer of Teamsters in the country.
Hahaha 
yep agree. Thanks for a healthy laugh
No idea. I never ship anything that light. I try to pack as many units as possible (close to 50 lbs) into one carton before shipping to Amazon. The UPS shipping cost for a 24" x 20" x 20" 45 lbs to about an hour drive FC is about $10. That’s a great deal. When Amazon had FedEx as a partner, it was even better; about $7 to $8.
I agree with your assessment. USPS and FedEx will absorb some work that used to belong to UPS. Yep, we’ll see an increase in delay and package lost.
This sounds like a good opportunity for us, sellers, to get some extra sales from other sellers who are out of stock.
Why that conclusion? Because they handle 24% of US parcel shipping?
They are very reactive rather than proactive. Look at the recent INFORM act, they’ve known about it since December and only started verifying accounts just before it went into effect.
If I had to switch to a non partnered it would be Fedex, my packages are too big for USPS to handle.
We have many sku’s, with low quantity a competitive advantage over offshore sellers with high quantity and few sku’s. turn would be 3 months with recalls on single digit percentages at 280-300 days.
However, seasonal items cause the numbers to change. Back to school is now, but the FC’s are delayed 30 days. The market will end for this year in 50-60 days.
It generally cost us more to ship than they can pick pack and ship for. The big factor is we see 4-5X lift with FBA.
The nice thing is when FBA runs out, FBM kicks in without us even thinking about it. Then we say, oops, must have missed this one and get them out ASAP.
We noticed they were A-B testing us. Giving us 10 cents off on a small package, just so we would use UPS, we started to not use it. Since an error would result in a $15 return trip or surcharge. We started to use UPS discounted only if the package arrived earlier and we saved $1 or more. We did get a number of those since they compared UPS discount to USPS Parcel, when we would have sent Priority.
With USPS, we don’t have to be as particular with size as we do on UPS, since we use flat rate or first class often.
Don’t know about anyone else, but for two weeks we have not been presented with an option for discounted UPS shipping when we use Amazon shipping for our FBM orders.
Percentage is kind of meaningless and not consistent.
The price difference for the large things I sell is variable because everything is DIM Weight and zone dependent.
USPS Priority can be anywhere from $10 to $30 more for something that is $15 to $50 with UPS.
IMO, I think other carriers would be able to deal with the overflow for a week; obviously, the longer this goes on the more impact it would have which will be significant if not settled quickly.
Last week, UPS said it will temporarily begin training nonunion employees in the U.S. to step in, should there be a strike.