Amazon’s Same-Day Grocery Launch, Cardboard Box Sales, and Why Traditional Carriers Are Struggling: This Week’s Logistics & E-commerce News
Here are some of the biggest headlines in the logistics & e-commerce world this week.
Traditional Carriers & Why They’re Struggling
Here’s an example of why the traditional carriers are losing share. I shipped a package to Atlanta via UPS on Friday afternoon. It’s a 2-day Ground transit from Nashville. Fine. However, since UPS counts transit days as business days, this package won’t be delivered until Tuesday! In Amazon speak, that is 4 days (Saturday—>Sunday—>Monday—>Tuesday).
What makes this more infuriating is that the package arrived in Atlanta at 3:41 am Saturday morning. For some reason, this package will now sit in a warehouse for 72 hours before the first delivery attempt is made. This is an unacceptable delivery experience in 2025.
Amazon Launches Same-Day Fresh Grocery Delivery in 1,000 U.S. Cities
They plan on 2,300 cities by year’s end as they compete further with Walmart in grocery. I, for one, am an Amazon Fresh user (I also use Instacart - mostly for Costco - and other “on demand” grocery needs).
In 2024, the American grocery sector was worth nearly $875 billion. It’s no wonder that Amazon is seeking to take a share of this market.
Amazon has been experimenting in the grocery business for years. It launched its first grocery storefront on its website in 2006 and bought Whole Foods Market for almost $14 billion in 2017. Amazon said in June that it would offer same-day and next-day delivery to more than 4,000 smaller cities, towns and rural areas by the end of the year and would invest $4 billion in tripling the size of its delivery network by 2026.
Tariffs
Tariffs are costing American shoppers $12.2 billion monthly. Per Omnisend’s latest research, Americans are now spending about $47 extra per person on a monthly basis. 66% of those surveyed noted they’ve seen prices shoot up since the tariffs, particularly when it comes to retailers such as Amazon (34%), Temu (30%), and Walmart (27%). Instead, 23% said they had already bought or were looking to buy from countries like Canada or Mexico in order to circumvent “price shocks.”
Retail buyers are reacting to tariffs with AI and early orders. 78% of industry buyers say they have utilized AI-enabled tools to enhance buying activities. In the survey of 50 retail industry buyers, respondents said they placed over half of holiday orders by the end of May — about two months sooner compared to the survey’s 2024 insights. Meanwhile, 78% of respondents said they’re worried about attaining proper inventory levels and 76% are concerned with supplier reliability due to geopolitical tensions.
Wine & Spirits
On a related note, I’ve been reading a lot about Canadian boycotts of U.S. products, particularly the impact on the U.S. alcohol industry. Some have called it Canada’s prohibition on U.S. alcohol. On the shelves of many Canadian liquor stores, bottles of Jack Daniel’s, Maker’s Mark and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum are nowhere to be found.
The Distilled Spirits Council, an industry group, estimated exports of U.S. distilled spirits to Canada at $43.4 million over the first six months of 2025, down about 62% from the same period in 2024. Exports of American wine were about 67% lower, the group said, citing U.S. trade data.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, sells spirits and wine to residents through 688 stores operated by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Last year, the LCBO sold more than $700 million worth of American liquor and wine, sales that have now dwindled to zero.
What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy
US box shipments—that is, volumes of empty packaging materials sold to retailers, which in turn use them to ship orders to warehouses, storefronts and Americans’ doorsteps—fell to the lowest second-quarter reading since 2015.
Memphis-based International Paper Co., one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, reported a 5% drop in daily US box shipments in the quarter from the same period a year ago, while packaging giant Smurfit Westrock Plc, based in Dublin, saw a 4.5% slide in North American corrugated cardboard volumes.
Most of the 2025 drop in packaging demand appears to be tied to Trump’s mixed messaging on tariffs. Companies don’t yet know how the levies will affect costs and long-term demand for their finished products, and they’re not stocking up on bulky packaging while they wait to find out.
Flexport Ups Monthly Minimum Fee for Fulfillment Customers
Flexport’s monthly minimum fee for its fulfillment services will increase from $500 to $5,000 at the start of 2026. The minimum fee factors in a merchant’s “non-D2C storage spend,” which encompasses eight spending categories: Fulfillment, reserve storage, parcel, full truckload and less-than-truckload freight, pallet and case handling, label services, prep and credit card processing. If a seller spends less than the monthly minimum across the eight categories in a given month, Flexport charges the difference between their actual spend and the minimum.
5 months is reasonable, but starting that clock in the months leading up to Q4 makes it a little more challenging. After acquiring Shopify’s logistics arm in 2023, Flexport rolled out fulfillment services aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses. Flexport is now sharpening its focus on larger customers to scale its business profitably.
