Next-day Sunday delivery available at U.S. Postal Service
On Wednesday, the U.S. Postal Service introduced a new program just before the hectic holiday season, in an attempt to increase business and be competitive. The new program involves a cheap next-day service that delivers parcels on Sundays. Therefore, consumers benefit from quick and convenient deliveries, which is what they ultimately want. These holiday plans also involve deliveries on Christmas Day for some cities. Furthermore, the Postal Service intends to mainly keep the package rates the same for the holiday season unlike competitors such as UPS.
This latest program is available in 20 American cities and enables customers to place their orders online from participating retailers as long as the orders are made before a cut off time on Saturday. Then, the items are collected from local stores by postal carriers to be delivered the following day. However, it has not yet been revealed which retailers are involved with this program but Walmart is thought to be considering this option. Moreover, the customers can use a new online tool to reschedule their package deliveries to ensure someone is at home to accept the delivery. This way, there are fewer issues with unattended delivery.
To find out more about this program, click here.
Shipwell and FleetUp team up for Smart Tracking and Shipment Management
This week, Shipwell, a connected freight shipping platform, and FleetUp, a fleet management and asset tracking system provider, announced their partnership. With this collaboration, Shipwell’s algorithmic tracking technology will be integrated with FleetUp’s fleet management system and their electronic logging device (ELD) to create a machine learning platform. This connected platform allows fleet managers to benefit from smart scheduling and routing capabilities, driver matching and real-time interactions amongst drivers and dispatchers.
Furthermore, fleet managers can provide customers with up-to-date information regarding shipments estimated time of arrival through real-time location tracking technology. FleetUp’s ELD enables the on-board diagnostics II port to stay open for maintenance and so that GPS and vehicle tracking can be maintained offline, unlike rival Bluetooth-enabled solutions. Drivers can also be selected using data based on their shipping history and previous drive times. Moreover, all load and shipment instructions can be shared with drivers en route through a connected device. This platform expansion makes shippers, brokers and carriers lives simpler.
To read more about this partnership, click here.
New ‘Silk Road’ rail link launched in Azerbaijan
On Monday, after years of delays, a new freight and passenger service linking Europe and Asia was finally launched. The new Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway (BTK) is 826 km in length of which 105km is new track. The rail line can transport 5 million tons of freight, which is expected to increase within a year. The BTK begins in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and stops in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to change tracks and head to Akhalkalaki, another Georgian town before ending in Kars, Turkey.
For freight travelling from China, it can be transported via train into Kazakhstan at the Khorgos Gateway, and then be transported by ferry across the Caspian Sea to ultimately end up at the New Port of Baku before being loaded onto the BTK and heading to Europe. This new service reduces the average journey between China and Europe to approximately 15 days. This shorter journey time is much faster than sea freight and cheaper than air freight.
Find out more information here.
Header photo: Toria/shutterstock.com
