Why Shippers Won't Leave UPS and FedEx (Even to Save 30%)

If you ship parcel, most of your volume probably moves on UPS or FedEx. Ben Emmrich, CEO and co-founder of Tusk Logistics, says shippers who move the right volume to alternative carriers save 30 to 40 percent per package. Almost nobody does it. Only 12 percent of shippers use alternative carriers today.

In this episode of Logistics Remix, I talked with Ben about what alternative carriers actually are in 2025, where they beat the national carriers, and why shippers still hesitate. Here are the takeaways.

“Alternative carrier” means more than it used to

Three years ago, “alternative carrier” meant one thing: regional carriers. Companies like UDS, GLS, and CDL. Many are family-run businesses that started in the 60s and 70s doing check delivery and healthcare runs, then moved into parcel around 2008 to 2010 as ecommerce grew.

What changed in the last 18 months is the rise of emerging carriers, sometimes called metro carriers. Think Veho, UniUni, Jitsu, and SpeedX. Instead of covering a region, they cover major metros: Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, New York, LA, Seattle, Denver. Their coverage map looks like Dalmatian spots.

Ben’s definition covers both groups. If you are a shipper comparing your UPS or FedEx rates against everything else, everything else is the alternative carrier universe. The problem is that comparing them apples to apples is genuinely hard.

Where alternative carriers win

There is no single answer for which carrier fits which volume. It depends. But Ben gave useful rules of thumb.

Short zones are the sweet spot. If a lot of your volume delivers within about 250 miles of your warehouse and you are running it on FedEx or UPS, you are overpaying significantly. These carriers build density in metro areas, and that density is what makes them cheap and fast.

Weight matters too. Traditional regionals are strong on heavier parcels. Savings get significant around 3 to 4 pounds and grow from there. Many regionals built their parcel business on meal kits, 20 to 25 pound boxes, and heavy freight is still core to what they do well.

Emerging carriers are good across the board, but many shine under a pound. UniUni, for example, offers ounce-based pricing on lightweight parcels. Most traditional regionals start at one pound.

The blocker is trust, not knowledge

Tusk publishes an alternative carrier benchmark report. The line that stuck with me: “This isn’t a knowledge gap, it’s a trust gap.”

The decision maker, usually a director or vice president of operations, knows the savings exist. They know they could save 30 to 40 percent per piece by moving volume off UPS or FedEx. They don’t switch because the risk feels personal. They are overloaded. Their systems are rigid. If the new carrier fails, it is on them.

So they default to what they know. Ben does not blame them. Sometimes sticking with the known carrier is the right call for that quarter. But quarter after quarter, the status quo gets expensive. His words: shippers who never make the change “are absolutely getting screwed,” and peak season proves it every year.

The way in: crawl, walk, run. Nobody serious jumps 100 percent into alternatives. Give one carrier a slice of volume and test it. If the test works, expand. If it doesn’t, turn it off and try a different carrier.

The cost of standing still

Peak season is the clearest example. Holiday surcharges run about $3 per parcel on FedEx and UPS. FedEx surcharges now kick in around September. A few years ago peak started in November. The window keeps getting longer. Ben calls it “death by a thousand cuts,” and shippers have just budgeted around it.

For perspective, shipping is often around 20 percent of the basket cost. A third-party logistics provider that cuts parcel cost by 30 percent can keep half the savings as margin and pass half to the brand. That is real money on the biggest cost line in the operation.

Adoption is still early. Three years ago only 3 percent of shippers used alternative carriers. Today it is 12 percent. Small base, but the curve is bending.

What Tusk actually does about it

Tusk is infrastructure for using alternative carriers at scale. The design principle: the shipper changes nothing at the pack station. Tusk integrates with the transportation management system and warehouse management system platforms shippers already use for rate shopping. Tusk carriers win on merit, when they are cheaper or faster. The associate prints the actual carrier label, like a GLS or UniUni label, and applies it.

Then Tusk handles the messy part. One daily dock sweep from the facility. Tusk routes the truck, injects parcels into the right carrier hubs, and optimizes for transit time and cost. The shipper never manages first-mile freight or linehauls.

The operations platform is the other half. One view of every Tusk parcel across all carriers, live and historical. Reroutes, address changes, gate codes, claims filing. Tusk watches parcels proactively: delay risk triggers a shipper notification, lost or damaged parcels get claims filed automatically, and denied claims get appealed. Their team will call a hub manager about two unscanned parcels in Minneapolis because the shipper doesn’t have bandwidth for that.

One detail I liked: Tusk works around existing UPS and FedEx contracts instead of against them. On average they earn 30 to 40 percent of a facility’s volume. Early in a contract period, they only take a parcel when savings clear a threshold of $3 to $5, so the shipper still hits its volume tier. After the tier is hit, every parcel is an open competition.

Proof through published numbers

Ben publishes carrier on-time performance on LinkedIn, good weeks and bad. His comment to the skeptics: look at the actual data.

He holds his own network to the same standard. It sits around 97 percent on time normally, but he’s transparent and will publish the good with the bad. Transparency both ways is the whole point.

What to do in the next 30 days

Ben’s recommended first step is free and takes almost no effort. Send his team 30 days of parcel-level detail, a PLLD file. Within about one business day, they return an impact analysis showing the margin you could unlock, broken down by origin, carrier, and injection hub.

From there, pick the one or two carriers with the biggest savings at a single facility and run a test. That is the crawl phase. The analysis tells you exactly where to start instead of guessing.

Contact: bemmrich@tusklogistics.com. The benchmark report and an alternative carrier guide are at tusklogistics.com.

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This post is based on the Logistics Remix episode “The Future of Alternative Carrier Shipping” with Ben Emmrich, CEO and co-founder of Tusk Logistics. The views are the guest’s and the host’s own.