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USPS vs. FedEx vs. UPS shipping price comparison

jeff

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#1
For many years I've shipped car parts and all sorts of other stuff, and I've always wanted to do a direct comparison to see who is cheaper, but never drove to all 3 places...until today. Of course there are other variables so this isn't a perfect comparison, but shipping a part today, about the same delivery time and insurance and options, apples to apples, got 3 quotes on the same box to the same place, the prices were...

UPS $97
FedEx $89
USPS $57

Interesting, and a pretty big difference.
 


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New Castle
#2
I'll bet Ron has a pretty good idea since he is shipping stuff daily.

But - I used to work for Amazon.com in several of their large DCs. There are a ton of variables that were considered once a box hit the line where they are stamped with shipping info. It was part of the warehouse management system's brains and it would run the numbers given the requirements (weight, volume, delivery date, price, truck availability, history or on-time deliveries, missing item complaints, etc).

USPS being the cheapest doesn't surprise me. My anecdotal viewpoint is that they are very frequently delayed. UPS and FedEx are almost never late and provide a solid estimate up front. I cynically believe it is because USPS doesn't need to care all that much. They are not a publicly traded company. They may not perform as well as UPS or FedEx, but they are cheaper and therefore ensure their shipping volume by working at a discount.

In your example, that is a significant savings and it isn't like we are shipping life-saving emergency supplies. USPS it is!
 


XR650R

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#3
I always go USPS if I have the option. The best, in my experience.
 


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#4
from my experience, usps is almost always cheaper. Larger/heavy boxes are usually the only times fedex beats them out
 


Boomba Racing

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#5
Just to share our .02 on the matter here:

Dealing with shipping as many packages as we do, you do get what you pay for. USPS is the most likely to have the most issues with something getting lost, damaged, or taking far longer than expected. This is because as mentioned above, they just don't seem to have the need to care. This isn't saying that every package is going to have issues (it is a very very small amount), it is just saying that when compared to UPS or FedEx, your chances are higher to have issues when using USPS.

UPS and FedEx are typically very closely priced and their services are very similar as far as delivery timing goes. They both offer guaranteed services such as Next Day and Second Day which are great for anyone needing something in a hurry.

One things that always surprises people is that shipping really isn't as cheap as they'd like to believe. For some reason customers often think it is like $4 or $5 dollars to ship a package with signature and insurance to California from Illinois and that just isn't the case. Most shipping companies still raise their prices a small percentage every 6 months to a year.

Working in the car parts industry really does open up your eyes to the whole arena of shipping logistics, though.
 


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Gatineau
#6
As a Canadian, I want anyone that ships to me to use USPS. The others will charge an absurd fee for the customs. UPS charged me 30$ to tell me I must pay 10$ in taxes, USPS/Canada Post never charged anything, not even the taxes I'm supposed to pay!

USPS/Canada Post might not care, but they are not there to make a profit at every corner, for me that's a big plus and even in the few occasions they might be more expensive than the others, at least the upfront cost is the one I pay and that's it. I also never had issue with the time, the couple of things I ordered from the US before took usually around a week to arrive, which I think is fair considering it goes through the customs and changes carrier.
 


cxwrench

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#7
We have a great UPS rate, but we're also part of a huge company that does thousands and thousand of dollars worth every day. Our old account when we were an independently owned small business was nowhere near as good. Another thing that will affect the rate is where it's going...as in if it's a large city or reasonably big town it's going to be a lot cheaper than shipping something to the middle of nowhere. I've seen the rate for shipping a bike double over the difference of 50 or 100miles. I can ship a bike from the bay area to Denver for $60.00ish, to get that bike to Durango would be double.
 


A7xogg

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#8
In my years of buying and selling car parts(along with other stuff) ups for me has had not one issue. Fedex has had a few issues with delayed and sent to the wrong house items, and usps packages seem like 1/3 to be either sent to wrong house, sent to wrong state, damages, etc etc. So i continue to keep giving ups my business because of my experiences with them.
 


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