FedEx details capacity plan as UPS strike fears intensify

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters have vowed to strike Aug. 1, after their current contract expires, if an agreement isn't in place by then. Negotiations over economic items like pay and benefits recently hit a roadblock.

No single carrier can absorb all of UPS' volume in the event of a disruption, FedEx's message noted, meaning delivery providers will limit what they accept in order to keep service levels high for existing customers.

"Therefore, shippers who are considering shifting volume to FedEx, or are currently in discussions with the company to open a new account, are encouraged to begin shipping with FedEx now," FedEx said in a statement Friday.

Earlier this year, the company urged customers to shift their UPS volumes to FedEx by March 31 to ensure their shipments would be included in capacity planning.

While there's a healthy amount of delivery capacity in the market as demand remains soft, it's not enough to absorb UPS' millions of packages daily. Only 10% to 20% of the company's shipments could be picked up by other carriers in the event of a strike, according to an estimate from Tommy Storch, transportation procurement expert at Insight Sourcing Group.

"If this were to happen, there's going to be millions of shipments left, and then there are customers not getting their shipments for days, if not weeks," Storch said in an interview.

UPS competitors always plan to absorb some of the company's volume when contract negotiations occur, but they should consider how much of that incremental delivery activity is actually sustainable, Jeremy Tancredi, a partner in West Monroe’s Operations Excellence practice, said in an email.

"Playing on the fear of a strike is a great sales tactic and allows competitors to start taking on some of that volume even before a strike happens, but in the event of a strike, it would not make good business sense to try and ramp up capacity to absorb a large majority of the volume," Tancredi said. "At some point, the strike will end, and they will be left with excess capacity as volume shifts back to UPS."