A New Era of Shipping Demands a New Way to Manage It
Parcel shipping has quietly grown into one of the largest cost centers for modern businesses. Volumes are climbing, delivery expectations are accelerating, and shipping now directly influences revenue, customer experience, and margins.
Yet for many organizations, shipping still receives far less scrutiny than labor, inventory, or marketing.
The latest market data tells a clear story: the parcel industry has entered a new phase—one defined by sustained volume growth, pricing pressure, and rising complexity. Understanding how we got here is the first step toward making smarter decisions moving forward.
Parcel Shipping Before, During, and After COVID
Pre-COVID: A Strong and Steady Climb
Before the pandemic, U.S. parcel shipping was already on a clear growth trajectory. Analysis from the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index, which tracks long-term parcel volume and revenue trends across the U.S. market, shows steady growth leading up to 2020. From 2015 to 2019, parcel volumes grew nearly 50%, driven by the rise of eCommerce and changing consumer expectations.
Between 2015 and 2019:
- Volume growth remained in the high single to low double digits
- Parcel revenue climbed from $85B in 2015 to $130B in 2019
- Shipping began shifting from a back-office function to a customer-facing differentiator
Even then, shipping was becoming more complex, but it had not yet reached today’s scale or financial impact.
| Year | Parcel Volume | Volume Growth | Parcel Revenue | Revenue Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 11.8B | +3.6% | $85B | No prior comparison |
| 2016 | 11.5B | -2.5% | ~$95.8B | +12.7% |
| 2017 | 12.6B | +9.6% | $107B | +11.7% |
| 2018 | 13.9B | +10.3% | $119B | +11.2% |
| 2019 | 15.4B | +10.8% | $130B | +9.2% |
COVID: A Permanent Change
The pandemic marked a turning point for the parcel industry.
According to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index, 2020 marked an unprecedented inflection point for the parcel industry. In 2020 alone:
- Parcel volumes jumped 38% year over year
- Revenue surged more than 25%
- The baseline for parcel demand permanently reset
What was once “peak season” behavior became everyday reality. Consumers grew accustomed to fast, reliable home delivery, and businesses were forced to scale shipping operations almost overnight.
This wasn’t a temporary spike. It was a structural shift.
| Year | Parcel Volume | Volume Growth | Parcel Revenue | Revenue Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 20.3B | +38.1% | $163B | +25.4% |
| 2021 | 21.5B | +65% | $188B | +16% |
Post-COVID: Volumes Up, Revenue Under Pressure
Since 2022, the market has entered a new phase. Data and analysis from the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index indicate:
- Parcel volumes continue to rise
- 22.4B shipments in 2024, up 3.4% from 2023
- Industry projections suggest volumes could approach ~30B shipments by 2030, roughly a 5% CAGR
But revenue has not kept pace.
From 2022 to 2024:
- Revenue growth slowed to low single digits
- Total U.S. revenue plateaued at around $200B, with a slight increase to $203.2B in 2024
- Pricing pressure intensified despite higher shipment counts
In short, eCommerce shippers are moving more packages but extracting less value per package. Competitive pricing pressure has pushed revenue per parcel down, even as shipment volumes rise. In 2024, revenue per parcel declined to $9.09, reflecting a market increasingly driven by low-cost services and alternative carriers.
Growth is shifting toward smaller packages and more affordable delivery options—meaning shippers must move significantly more volume to generate the same revenue they once achieved with fewer shipments.
| Year | Parcel Volume | Volume Growth | Parcel Revenue | Revenue Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 21.5B | -1.4% | $198.4B | +5.5% |
| 2023 | 21.7B | +2.6% | $197.9B | -0.3% |
| 2024 | 22.4B | +3.2% | $203.2B | +2.7% |
Shipping Is Now a Top P&L Driver
Shipping is no longer just a cost to manage. It is a growth lever.
Across industries:
- Shipping typically accounts for 15–20% of net sales for retailers
- Fulfillment and shipping represented ~26.5% of Amazon’s net sales in 2018, even before the pandemic surge
- Logistics costs now consume 12–20% of eCommerce revenue, up roughly 5% since 2010
At the same time, shipping directly affects revenue conversion. Faster delivery options—next-day or same-day—can materially influence whether a customer completes checkout.
Why Shipping Remains Under-Managed—Even as the Stakes Rise
Despite its size and impact, parcel shipping often remains under-managed.
Many organizations still treat shipping as a fixed cost rather than a strategic category. Ownership is fragmented across teams, systems, and carriers, and parcel spend is frequently excluded from structured spend management altogether. As a result, performance is difficult to evaluate, and decisions are often made based on assumptions rather than data.
At the same time, the external environment has become far more demanding.
The U.S. parcel market is now a $200B+ industry, with volumes that continue to rise year over year. Yet revenue growth is no longer keeping pace with volume growth, creating sustained margin pressure across the ecosystem. Faster delivery expectations, returns, surcharges, and increasingly fragmented carrier networks have added layers of operational complexity that most organizations are not equipped to manage with legacy tools.
Parcel shipping has become one of the last major optimization frontiers in the supply chain—but it’s also one of the hardest to see clearly. Hidden fees, service-level tradeoffs, and inconsistent visibility hide true performance, making it difficult to understand where money is actually going, let alone how to improve outcomes.
The result: millions in shipping spend managed without the clarity required to control cost, protect service, or support growth.
What This Means for Shippers
Shipping is no longer something you can afford to manage in the background. As volumes grow and margins tighten, the businesses that remain successful will be the ones that treat parcel shipping like the strategic function it has become.
That starts with visibility.
With a clear view into shipping data, costs, and performance, shippers can:
- Understand where spend is really going
- Identify inefficiencies hidden in complexity
- Make confident decisions that balance cost, service, and growth
This is where data-driven logistics intelligence changes the conversation—from reacting to costs, to actively shaping outcomes.
SiftedAI Was Built for What Shipping Has Become—and What Comes Next
As parcel shipping has grown more complex and more business-critical, the sophistication used to manage it hasn’t kept pace. Shipping spend is massive, yet the data behind it is often fragmented, difficult to interpret, and time-consuming to act on.
SiftedAI was built to close that gap—giving shippers the answers they need, not extra work.
By bringing all your shipping data into one intelligent platform, SiftedAI turns real-world complexity into clear, actionable insight so you can understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what to do next.
With SiftedAI Copilot (in Beta now), we’re taking it a step further, with an agentic AI overlay that works alongside your team, surfacing patterns, flagging emerging risks and hidden cost drivers, and calling out new savings opportunities right when they matter. And when you want to go deeper, its natural-language interface makes complex logistics questions as simple as a conversation.
The winners won’t be the companies that ship the most—they’ll be the ones that understand their shipping best.
Build a smarter shipping strategy for today and tomorrow with SiftedAI.
