I had to order a few more parts for the BRZ and I noticed that a lot of the faster delivery options seem to be very expensive at the moment. Like, 2 day delivery across the country for a couple of small parts (exhaust gasket and sway bar endlinks) being over 50% of the purchase price of the items.
Seen this with several merchants so I'm assuming they're passing through their shipping cost. Has FedUps really cranked up prices that much?
Costs are absolutely up.
I have been selling off my E28 parts hoard on another forum and people are constantly freaking out at me in regards to what shipping costs these days. I repackaged an item twice for a guy to save five bucks on shipping, sent him the measurements and weight and told him to give me a label if he wanted to see for himself.
There was a general shortage of truck drivers before the pandemic, now COVID workforce challenges + fuel supply fears + economic inflation is a hell of a combination to deal with.
Ports are insane right now, which means lots of manufacturing companies are using more expensive air freight for material to avoid lengthy delays. There's only so much freight that can be moved at a given time. Add to that a shortage of truckers and higher fuel prices in general and you get high prices to ship stuff.
Supply and demand - we have a lot more people buying online instead of in person, so there's a lot more demand for shipping. Right now you can get shipping at somewhat low costs or shipping that arrives on time, but not both at once.
Lumber 321% I knew it was up a lot but ...!!!!!!!!
Say it with me "In-fla-tion"
But yeah I'm noticing the same thing. Last year I shipped a freaking convertible top frame to netherlands for about $200 (shipping Chicago to portland OR was pretty much the same price - WTB?)
Just a few weeks ago, an ebay user asked me for a shipping quote for a tonneau bow (maybe 1/4 the size and weight of the top frame) to France and the quote came back at $200.
Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:Say it with me "In-fla-tion"
The 70's are back, baby!
I think realistically, most of these increases are not inflation, simply low supply and other issues (as noted). I am not sure 100% (real, overall) inflation in a few months is even possible. Actual inflation apparently is more in the line of 1% for April (which is still bad) and will likely not ever fade (kind of how inflation works).
That said, there is certainly reason to see inflation in the future. It's possible these recent increases will roll into that, or at least will be a bit of a pre-numbing for what is to come.
There have been a number of hits to the shipping infrastructure over the past year that I wonder if we're just now seeing the effects from. First was covid, which saw a big drop in gas prices, but an increase (initially) in shipping. From there, we had some stimulus to keep the economy going, which probably drove those commercial haulers (gas, lumber, supplies) to start picking up more package based deliveries. Sprinkle in a shift to less large scale manufacturing (houses and such) because people were staying indoors and with covid restrictions, not as easy to build. Plus, those who were continuing to manufacture are running out of supplies because manufacturers in other countries are shutting down for covid.
However, the stimulus started to run out, so the package delivery demand has abated a bit?
Plus, you had the Suez canal incident which backed things up tremendously and, possibly, put some of the smaller shippers out of business or on the verge of it. Recently it's been the gas pipeline and the mass panic that has caused.
All the while the vaccine is being distributed so people are feeling more comfortable to get out and, I think, we're starting to see a huge drive in demand because of it. So, a lot of the business who were running on skeleton crews are now having to ramp up quickly as they just can't deliver it fast enough.
I guess I'm naive (or just don't understand economics), but I hope it's not rampant inflation as much as the pains of us getting back to normal.....
-Rob
We are definitely still seeing perturbations in the shipping industry from the last year. Suez didn't help. But that's going to show up on the supply side, not the domestic ecommerce orders.
For FedEx specifically, though - rates went up just less than 5% in January. What you may be seeing is vendors being less willing to subsidize expedited shipping costs. This may be to discourage expedited shipping because it's harder to get stuff out on time with a depleted staff, or it may be because you've gotta pay that shipping staff. There have also possibly been some increases in fuel surcharges.
The biggest department at FM is the shipping department, and they consume material like you wouldn't believe. The box our turbo kits ship in costs $40 - and that was a few years ago, I know it's hard to actually get cardboard boxes right now. The shipping staff is hard to find right now which means they're more expensive than they used to be. Those costs have to get covered somewhere.
Plus the whole FREE SHIPPING! push in ecommerce has caused everyone to think that shipping doesn't actually cost money. While people seem to think "oh, stick it in a flat rate box and it's like $5", that's not what it actually costs. And the invention of the internet only made the world seem smaller, it's still as physically big as it ever was :)
BoxheadTim said:I had to order a few more parts for the BRZ and I noticed that a lot of the faster delivery options seem to be very expensive at the moment. Like, 2 day delivery across the country for a couple of small parts (exhaust gasket and sway bar endlinks) being over 50% of the purchase price of the items.
2 day cross country shipping for small cheap parts is always going to be relatively spendy. That first pound is the most expensive one.
Keith Tanner said:BoxheadTim said:I had to order a few more parts for the BRZ and I noticed that a lot of the faster delivery options seem to be very expensive at the moment. Like, 2 day delivery across the country for a couple of small parts (exhaust gasket and sway bar endlinks) being over 50% of the purchase price of the items.
2 day cross country shipping for small cheap parts is always going to be relatively spendy. That first pound is the most expensive one.
Agreed - I wasn't expecting it to be cheap, I was just a tad surprised that the two day shipping came in at around $60.
OTOH that's pretty cheap if it gets me to the track next weekend, so I was willing to pay for it. Of course that was before I realised that there were a couple more parts I needed to get...
Rates definitely went up with the USPS. It seems even the tiniest package to ship now is almost $5..
dxman92 said:Rates definitely went up with the USPS. It seems even the tiniest package to ship now is almost $5..
Technically, yes. But not as much as you think, only a few percent. This is a great example of perception vs reality :)
https://www.fp-usa.com/usps-rate-change-effective-january-24-2021
Here are the full list of rates including packages.
https://download.fp-usa.com/rate_change/2021_RateChange_CheatSheet.pdf
Slippery said:
Some of those numbers don't make sense.
36% then 15% then 17% totals 83%
BUT
52% then 14% then 14% totals 82%?
I mean, I don't have my calculator in front of me, but that seems off.
Everybody is swimming in free time and cash and vendors all want a piece of the action. We should have pandemics more often eh? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You guys should try hiring people right now, impossible. I'm getting 1/10 the applicants as 3-4 years ago and offering 20%+ more in pay. I can't even get people from staffing agencies. Everyone I've talked to is having the same issues adding staffing.
Some of our retail customers are dropping operating hours because they can't find enough staffing at certain locations. It's definitely strange to pull up at a national chain store that is closed because of lack of staff.
If you can name a product or material, it's either through the roof expensive or impossible to get.
If you can name a job/profession, people are in short supply.
In reply to Andy Neuman :
I'm in a very specific field and I'm getting non stop messages from recruiters right now.
Andy Neuman said:You guys should try hiring people right now, impossible. I'm getting 1/10 the applicants as 3-4 years ago and offering 20%+ more in pay. I can't even get people from staffing agencies. Everyone I've talked to is having the same issues adding staffing.
Some of our retail customers are dropping operating hours because they can't find enough staffing at certain locations. It's definitely strange to pull up at a national chain store that is closed because of lack of staff.
For one segment of my hourly teams I raised starting wages 60%. It was a partial commission job and no one would even look because they either didn't think they could GET the commission or they couldn't do math. It's nuts how few people seem to actually be looking.
There is no more air cargo capacity at any of the majors. Even with amazon setting up their own network, the rest of the world came together me consumed it all.
I fully expect to get a call from a receruiter in a few months offering me even more pay for what I was doing at my old job. I'm just waiting out my time here at Walmart.
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