Why Partner with Redwood for Parcel Shipping? Because We Deliver.

Welcome to another January. It’s that time of year when everyone looks back at the big events and headlines of 2024 — while also looking ahead to 2025 with cautious optimism. Redwood is no exception. Last year was a great one for our company, our customers and our partners, marked by some big successes. 

As just one example, our expert Redwood Parcel team delivered truly amazing results for customers in 2024. Consider these impressive statistics for our Parcel business: 

• Customers achieved an average of $1.1 million in annual cost savings by partnering with Redwood Parcel.
• That translates to an average reduction of 16% in customers’ overall parcel spend.
• On average, Redwood positions customers to negotiate more favorable carrier contracts in just 43 days. 

How does Redwood achieve these impressive results? Because each shipper is unique, that depends on the customer. Whether customers need parcel carrier contract advisory services or parcel execution, Redwood offers the dedicated resources and specialized expertise required to optimize their parcel shipping activities. Companies can focus on their own core business, while trusting the Redwood Parcel team to assess their parcel shipping challenges, identify their best opportunities and drive ambitious, yet achievable, improvements. 

Redwood’s Parcel team can optimize your current parcel carrier contract, recommend new carriers, an improved carrier mix, optimized shipping services and packaging strategies that reduce costs — while maintaining or improving service levels. The Redwood Parcel team can audit customers’ invoices and payments, to identify both savings opportunities and errors that result in carrier refunds.  

As former FedEx and UPS employees, Redwood’s team coaches customer teams on negotiating better rates and contracts with carriers. And Redwood Parcel experts create dashboards, business intelligence tools and best practices that remain with the company — so customers can identify and pursue future cost savings opportunities.  

Check out our case studies page to see our Redwood Parcel success stories for a range of customers. They include an industrial manufacturer, a rail provider, a leading retailer, a consumer products company, a packaging manufacturer, an apparel maker, and a chemical manufacturer. These case studies are just a small sampling of the hundreds of companies Redwood has supported over 20-plus years. 

New Year, Significant New Challenges for Shippers 

Here’s why your company should be Redwood’s next partner: 2025 is already starting out with significant challenges for parcel shippers. 

UPS and FedEx have both enacted a general rate increase (GRI) of 5.9% for 2025, as well as an average fee increase of 10% for accessorials. UPS is also adding a 2.0% fee for credit card transactions. Both carriers have launched a confusing list of hidden fees and surcharges for different regions, package types and delivery addresses. For example, large package shippers will see costs increase by an average of 26.5%. This could have disastrous impacts on your shipping costs and profit margins.  

And that’s not all. 2025 is also bringing big changes from UPS regarding its SurePost offering, described by the carrier as “an economy service for less urgent, lower value shipments.” This service was discontinued on December 31, 2024, when the UPS/USPS Negotiated Service Agreement (NSA) enabling SurePost final delivery by USPS expired. Analysts expect that UPS might take this business in-house to compete with FedEx Ground Economy. But no announcement has been made yet. 

But wait, there’s more bad news. After reporting a loss of $9.5 billion in 2023, USPS is raising all its rates effective January 19. Parcel Select rates will rise by 9.2%. As a result, UPS says it must increase prices for its Mail Innovations collaborative USPS services by up to 25% at the same time. Stay tuned for all the details later this month.  

Without knowing more about your specific parcel shipping characteristics — like your typical package size and weight, delivery distance, urgency, preferred carrier and service used — it’s hard to tell exactly how these changes will affect your parcel spend in the new year. But we predict you’ll see some dramatic cost increases, unless you conduct detailed analysis and make strategic changes now. 

Whatever 2025 Brings, You’ll Be Ready with Redwood  

Carrier rate increases — and other industry changes that we can’t even predict yet — are bound to create some big challenges for parcel shippers this year. It’s hard to profitably and agilely navigate these changes, especially if you don’t have a dedicated internal team of parcel shipping analysts and rate negotiation experts. And who does? 

The great news is that you don’t have to invest in any additional internal resources in 2025 to master the tough challenge of profitable parcel shipping. Redwood has already created all the parcel expertise you need, and it’s available to our customers in a flexible, cost-effective manner. Best of all? As we discussed at the beginning of this blog, Redwood delivers reliable, proven results. 

Imagine the difference between navigating carrier cost increases and other challenges alone — versus partnering with Redwood to save an average of 16% on your parcel spend in 2025. No matter what this year brings, we’re pretty sure it will be a more profitable one for parcel shippers who partner with Redwood. Reach out to Redwood to start improving your 2025 results today.