EDITOR’SNOTE

ONE YEAR LATER

By Amanda Armendariz

It’s hard to believe that as of this writing, it’s been a year (or, 13-14 months, to be precise) since COVID-19 swept the world and many states instituted stay-at-home orders. As we all know by now, during that time, the e-commerce sector exploded, as people started ordering every conceivable product online in an effort to avoid physical stores (or fi nd the products that were cleaned out of said stores!). An industry that was already on a marked upswing shot ahead by light years. While businesses certainly welcome the exponential growth in orders, with this increase comes challenges, as well. No business wants to lose out to their competition, but it can also be daunting to fi gure out how to address this growth while maintaining customer satisfaction and respectable profi t margins. But that’s exactly what shippers must do. While life is slowly heading back to normal, given the increasing number of vaccinations and the re-opening of many public spaces, one thing that came out of the pandemic that is likely here to stay is this increased e-commerce volume. Even when COVID-19 is (hopefully) a distant memory, I still can’t see myself resuming in-person shopping in many cases, purely because I’ve grown so accustomed to the convenience of online ordering or curbside pickup. And I know I’m not alone, so the sooner that shippers can meet this growth head-on, the better. One way that shippers can tackle this opportunity is by conducting a thorough network analysis to see if they’re leaving any savings on the table. It may be that these shippers need to branch out from the Big Two and include regional carriers in their carrier mix to a greater degree than they do already. We’ve included a special look at some of these carriers, starting on page 30. Be sure to check it out; you never know, your next partner in shipping success could be found within those pages. As always, thanks for reading PARCEL. Here are some of the most-read articles on our site in recent weeks. If you haven’t already checked them out, you might want to — there is some great information in there!

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