Here is our list of tips for shippers to be best prepared for what the rest of 2025 has in store.

1 – Evaluate and Optimize Your Shipping Network

Where your suppliers, distribution centers, and customers are located directly impacts your inbound and outbound shipping costs. This makes regularly evaluating how each location affects parcel shipping costs and delivery times a priority. Keeping your parcel operations streamlined is not a ‘set it and forget it’ thing. Tools like our Parcel Spend Intelligence and Supply Chain Planning (to assist with inventory) can ensure your supply chain is optimized from sourcing to final delivery.

2 – Renegotiate Your Contracts for Optimal Rates

The 2025 General Rate Increases (GRI) and other rate changes impact your shipping costs, so use this time as an opportunity. Renegotiating your rate agreements is ALWAYS an option and one you should choose regularly. The parcel market is changing fast, and your agreement should reflect the best rates and terms possible. You have to initiate the process, however, because the carriers will not tell you that you can pay less. With all the changes we listed from 2024 above and the 2025 GRIs in place, now is a great time to have the carriers compete for your business.

Here’s an important point: Companies can almost always offset parts of GRIs and other rate updates with a renegotiated parcel contract. Doing so requires data, modeling technology, and experience to know how far the carriers can be pushed. Lean on our experts and our market knowledge for help and advice in the renegotiation process.

3 – Finally, Make the Leap and Leverage Technology

You know the potential of BI tools, so stop holding back. Parcel SaaS technology like our Parcel Margin Analysis (which provides
the true profit margin on each product sold, considering gross margin, the total transportation expense required to service the order, and revenue capture from the order) and Parcel Cost Variance (which provides the difference in expected costs compared to the carrier invoice amount and how much you billed your customers) make it possible for companies to understand the impact of the GRIs and other fees and surcharges year-round.

4 – Stay Educated, Be A Parcel Expert

Negotiating with carriers and running an efficient parcel operation requires staying educated on what’s happening in the market. This means maintaining an awareness and understanding of rates, market conditions, and what the carriers are really thinking.

We produce three important GRI-related reports each year: the FedEx GRI, the UPS GRI, and a comparison of the two. The reports provide all the key insights you’ll need to understand and avoid the GRIs’ full impact on your shipping costs in 2025.

Contact https://businesssolutionsus.com/contact for a no-obligation analysis of how all of this year’s rate changes will impact your small parcel shipping costs moving forward. We’ll also provide actionable ideas, based on your company’s shipping patterns, of what you can do to avoid the cost increase