Storms hinder FedEx on Christmas

On Christmas Eve powerful storms ripped across part of the southern U.S., claiming at least 14 lives in three states including Tennessee, the home of FedEx’s major air hub in Memphis. That didn’t help matters for the integrator as it pushed to get packages delivered on time for the holiday.

Regardless of the weather, some retailers were concerned about widespread delays in the FedEx network said the Wall Street Journal. FedEx drivers were working extra shifts Christmas day, and operating with slight delays while making operational changes due to the weather. A spokeswoman for FedEx said that Express employees had volunteered to work extra shifts on the holiday to get packages to customers on time.

Before the holidays FedEx predicted it would deliver a record-breaking 317 million packages globally between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, an increase of 12.4 percent over 2014. Its competitor, UPS, said it expected to deliver more than 630 million packages during the peak season, which would mark an increase of more than 10 percent over 2014. UPS said it finished its deliveries on Christmas Eve around 8 p.m. The UPS hub in Louisville wasn’t affected by the weather like Memphis was.

FedEx’s guaranteed express packages typically operate as high as 99 percent on time said WSJ, but it appears as though they missed the mark by a couple of percentage points, which is still a large number of packages.

As expected, holiday package volume increased as more consumers turned to online shopping. E-commerce sales rose 11.8 percent from Nov. 26 through December 20 compared to 2014. FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service combined estimated that there were more than 1.5 billion package deliveries during the holidays.