2020-2026 FedEx & UPS Rate Increases Timeline

Between 2020 and 2026, FedEx and UPS made at least 161* separate, documented pricing changes to their US parcel services, including general rate increases, pandemic-era surcharges, fuel-table adjustments, new administrative fees, and structural rule rewrites that changed which packages get surcharged in the first place.

This is the complete timeline, built from Sifted’s ongoing rate-change tracking. The pattern here explains why both carriers are repricing around the shippers they want to keep, a shift that carries into 2026 and shows no sign of slowing.

There’s no single number to plan around here; the real takeaway is that catching each change before it compounds has outgrown what most shipping teams can do on the side.

*This figure reflects every change we could verify through public carrier communications; the true total is most likely higher, since not every accessorial adjustment comes with a public announcement.

2020 — 9 Changes

(FedEx 5, UPS 4)

2021 — 12 changes

(FedEx 5, UPS 7)

2022 — 19 changes

(FedEx 7, UPS 12)

2023 — 14 changes

(FedEx 6, UPS 8)

2024 — 25 changes

(FedEx 7, UPS 18)

2025 — 45 changes

(FedEx 17, UPS 28)

2026 — 37 changes through September (FedEx 13, UPS 24)

Note: The 2026 figures reflect January through September—the year is still in progress, and this table will be updated again once it closes.

What 7 Years of Change Shows

The base rate was the smallest part of the story

In 2020 and 2021, the published GRI barely moved, 4.9% both years, in line with a decade of prior increases at both carriers. Shippers who budgeted off that number alone were still caught off guard, because the real cost sat in the surcharges layered on top: pandemic-era residential and demand fees in 2020, three new accessorial charges at FedEx in a single month in 2021, and fuel-table increases running on their own separate clock.

The GRI told shippers what to expect from the base rate, but it told them almost nothing about the total.

Pandemic surcharges didn’t expire; they got renamed

The residential and demand surcharges both carriers introduced in 2020 to manage pandemic-driven volume were framed as temporary. By January 2022, UPS had folded its version into a permanent “Peak/Demand” surcharge structure, and FedEx followed with a similar accessorial category.

What started as an emergency response to a volume spike became a standing line item shippers are still paying today.

The GRI climbed a full two points in three years, then held

FedEx and UPS spent the better part of a decade anchored to 4.9% annual base-rate increases before 2022 pushed that to 5.9%. In 2023, both carriers went to 6.9%, a record for either company, citing inflation and softening package volume. Rates held at 5.9% for 2024 and 2025, and stayed there again for 2026—three straight years at the same ceiling, a full two points higher than where the GRI stood in 2021.

2025 introduced a layer of fees that have nothing to do with shipping volume

Between March and May 2025, UPS added a run of new charges that don’t scale with package weight, dimensions, or zone at all: a $10 paper commercial invoice fee (raised to $25 by September, then $40 by May 2026), a $5 print-invoice fee, a $25 check and wire fee, and a 2% payment-processing fee applied to every invoice regardless of how a shipper pays. The late fee climbed from 8% to 9.9% in the same stretch.

These are billing and payment terms, not accessorial charges, and they tend to sit outside the parts of a contract most shippers review on a regular cadence.

The rules for two of the biggest surcharges changed, not just the price

For years, both carriers triggered additional-handling and large-package surcharges the same way: by a package’s length plus girth. UPS changed that first. In January 2025, it added a new cubic-volume rule on top of the old one for its Additional Handling Charge. On August 17, the rule got teeth: any domestic package over 8,640 cubic inches (five cubic feet) qualifies for the charge on volume alone, no matter what its length and girth measure. The Large Package Surcharge picked up its own new threshold, too: 17,280 cubic inches or 110 pounds.

FedEx didn’t add a matching volume rule until Jan. 12, 2026. Two weeks later, UPS raised its own threshold from 8,640 to 10,368 cubic inches to match FedEx exactly. So for about five months, the two carriers were sizing up the same kind of package two different ways, and neither one ever dropped the original length-plus-girth rule. Both criteria still apply today: a package trips the surcharge if it crosses either line.

Here’s why that matters in dollars. Picture five handbags bundled into one standard carton: 9,000 cubic inches, 10 pounds, shipped Ground to Zone 4. Before Aug. 17, 2025, that carton cleared every UPS threshold and cost about $20.61 to ship. After Aug. 17, it trips the Additional Handling Charge on volume alone, and the cost jumps to roughly $59.68, a 190% increase on a package that never changed.

Any additional-handling or large-package terms a shipper locked in before 2025 were priced against packages that, by 2026, no longer matched what was actually getting billed.

2026 is already outpacing 2025, and the story keeps shifting

Through September, FedEx and UPS combined for 37 documented changes in nine months, a faster monthly pace than 2025’s. If that pace holds, 2026 finishes ahead of 2025’s total of 45.

The one major domestic story landed early. FedEx and UPS spent January aligning their Additional Handling and Large Package/Oversize triggers around the same cubic-volume and weight thresholds, closing out the five-month stretch (detailed above) where the two carriers measured identical packages two different ways. Since then, most of 2026’s activity has been fuel tables, international surge fees, and administrative fee increases: the same pattern that defined 2025, just moving faster.

Why the Carriers Are Moving This Fast

The pattern in the timeline above isn’t random. It’s not just fuel costs and inflation, either. FedEx and UPS have both said, plainly, that they’re no longer trying to win every package. They’re choosing which shippers they want to keep, and that choice shows up throughout this timeline as much as cost pressure does.

FedEx made the point directly. At its February 2026 Investor Day, Chief Customer Officer Brie Carere told analysts, “If you’re shipping T-shirts, FedEx might not be for you.” The company said 70% of its ground shipping revenue already comes from shipments traveling more than 300 miles. It’s projecting only low single-digit growth in B2C package volume through 2029. Instead, it’s leaning into premium B2B freight and specialized categories like healthcare and automotive shipping, segments that can absorb higher rates.

UPS is running the same strategy, and running it harder. By mid-2026, the company plans to cut its Amazon volume by more than half: roughly 2 million packages a day, an estimated $5 billion in revenue, gone in under two years.

The numbers already show it. In the fourth quarter of 2025, UPS’s US average daily volume dropped 10.8% year over year. Revenue per piece rose 8.3% that same quarter, its strongest growth in four years. UPS closed 93 facilities and cut about 48,000 positions in 2025, with another 30,000 job cuts and two dozen more closures planned for 2026. The goal: a 12% US domestic operating margin by the fourth quarter of 2026, up from 7.5% in 2024.

Like FedEx, UPS is putting that freed-up capacity toward higher-margin freight. Two 2025 acquisitions, Frigo-Trans and Andlauer Healthcare Group, are building out its cold-chain and healthcare logistics business.

None of this is happening in isolation. Amazon’s own delivery network has grown exponentially in volume since 2019, and it recently opened to shippers outside the Amazon ecosystem. A wider field of regional and specialized carriers is also taking share, especially on the lightweight, short-zone volume FedEx and UPS are stepping back from. That competition is part of what’s pushing both carriers to get so deliberate about price and mix.

For a shipper, the cause doesn’t matter much. The effect is the same. The carrier relationship you’ve had for a decade or more may be quietly repricing your business right now, not through one big increase you’d see coming, but through the accessorial changes, fee restructuring, and fuel-table adjustments that fill the tables above.

How Sifted Can Help

A fuel surcharge that moves from 19% to 26% reads like a seven-point bump. Run it through an invoice, and it’s actually a 36% increase in what that surcharge costs — exactly the kind of gap that’s easy to miss until it’s already compounded across a quarter of shipments and landed on the P&L.

Most shippers only notice a fraction of the 161 changes above while the rest quietly move in the background, shaping actual shipping spend long before anyone thinks to look.

Tracking multiple carriers and dozens of surcharge categories is a full-time job in itself, on top of everything else a shipping team already owns.

That’s the gap Sifted exists to close: continuous monitoring of carrier changes, catching them before they compound, and translating what they mean for your actual shipping profile, not just a headline percentage after the fact.

Get in touch to see how these changes have shown up in your shipping costs.