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A surge in e-commerce demand has led to a proliferation of start-ups and small hauliers as the biggest carriers struggle to cope with volume, according to Bloomberg.

Residential deliveries had already been on the rise in recent years due to the growth of online retail, a trend that was accelerated by pandemic lockdowns and high-street closures. But even as vaccination programmes make it safer for people to venture out again, customer expectations of options such as same-day delivery may continue to bed in.

These start-ups typically use the gig economy model of freelance drivers organising via an app, and picking up from distribution centres.

While they’re currently no competitive threat to the titans of international logistics, last-mile delivery start-ups are proving to be an attractive proposition to shippers looking for more control over the customer experience during the last leg of delivery.

Big courier companies are also increasingly working with these start-ups to help them improve the experience for the end customer. UPS, for example, owns a stake in and is running trials with Roadie, a start-up which offers same-day delivery with a focus on scalability from local to national.

It’s not just last-mile delivery that sees big companies innovating through start-ups. Earlier this week, DHL announced it would be running trials with Dronamics for more efficient “middle-mile” operations.

Source: Bloomberg

An issue with the Edge DNS service from content delivery network (CDN) company Akamai took down a swathe of corporate websites yesterday evening, including carriers FedEx, British Airways and Delta Airlines.

Web services from impacted companies were temporarily affected.

The outage lasted less than an hour and was reportedly not the result of a cyberattack but a software configuration update that triggered a bug.

Reports of issues came from Akamai and Oracle, another CDN company, but Oracle attributed the issue to Akamai.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a central part of the internet that maps domain names (such as transglobalexpress.co.uk) to the unique numerical IP addresses required for a browser to locate the necessary server and load webpage content.

While brief website outages are common, CDN companies like Akamai are designed to provide network back-ups that maintain website availability and reduce disruptions when something goes wrong. It’s also a security measure against cyberattacks.

However, this is the third major incident in the last couple of months where a problem with the content delivery networks themselves has caused huge outages across the internet.

In June, another Akamai outage took down a slew of airline and bank websites, while dozens of websites, including the UK government’s, and even parts of Google and Amazon, were taken down by an issue with CDN company Fastly earlier in the month.

This has led to warnings of overreliance on a small handful of companies when it comes to services relating to internet infrastructure, and the vulnerabilities this creates.

Source: CNN

Royal Mail has warned that there may be postal delays in several areas of England due to staff forced to self-isolate.

Usually delivering six days per week, under its obligations as the UK’s designated universal service provider, Royal Mail has listed ten areas in which it will attempt to deliver every other day, “though this may not always be possible in offices temporarily affected by very high levels of absence.”

The areas affected include Blackpool, Bristol South East, Chorley, Enfield, Middleton, Newton Abbot, Plympton, Rochdale, Southport and Worthing.

Credit: Johannes Plenio

Royal Mail is far from alone in suffering staff shortages due to rising delta variant infection rates and consequent test and trace app alerts—supermarkets, for example, have struggled to keep shelves stocked due to absent staff and supply chain disruption.

The UK government, which recently ended all lockdown restrictions despite the spread of the variant, has looked to tackle the so-called “pingdemic” by increasing the number of sectors exempted from self-isolation rules.

Source: Money Saving Expert, Sky News

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E-commerce spending may be slowing after a pandemic boom, according to the latest financial reports from UPS and Amazon.

UPS shares fell to the lowest in three months this week after domestic US volume in its second quarter dropped 2.9%, and ground shipments specifically were down 4% on the previous year.

Average daily volume was down 0.8%, due mainly to the fall in domestic demand. The average daily volume for business-to-consumer shipments was down 15.8%.

However, business-to-business shipments were up 25.7%, and daily international shipments were up 12.7% year on year.

UPS has been taking on a “better, not bigger” approach this year, focusing on small business and higher margin shipments rather than sheer volume.

Despite falling volume, the company reported record earnings in the second quarter, with a 14.5% increase from 2020 to $23.4 billion.

In the same quarter, Amazon’s core e-commerce business grew 15%, which is the slowest rate since 2019. Amazon shares fell about 7% after the news.

Amazon’s chief financial advisor, Brian Olsavsky, said that in the United States and Europe especially, “people are getting out more, doing other things besides shopping.”

Source: Reuters, Financial Times, Air Cargo News