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The following excerpts were originally posted by Esther Fung, in The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2026, and are reproduced here in part.
Excerpt:
The rising costs have sent online retailers in search of cheaper shipping options from the U.S. Postal Service—whose Ground Advantage option for businesses starts at $5.09—and from a growing batch of lesser-known carriers like Veho and Jitsu.
Of more than 1,000 people surveyed by McKinsey in 2024, delivery speed ranked fifth in their online-shopping priorities. Most important to them was shipping cost. In the same survey two years earlier, consumers had cited delivery speed as most important to them, and delivery costs second.
More than 95% of the survey respondents in 2024 said they preferred free standard delivery, typically four to seven days, versus paying for expedited delivery.
Veho, a parcel carrier focused on e-commerce deliveries, recently introduced FlexSave, a service that promises an arrival time in a flexible delivery window—a range of Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, for example—instead of on a fixed day. That allows less-urgent packages on a truck to be bumped to the following day if unforeseen delays occur. Some of Veho’s business clients pick this cheaper option so they can, in turn, offer free shipping to their customers, says Veho’s CEO, Itamar Zur.
Giving parcel carriers a broader delivery window gives them more flexibility to wait for a truck that is more full, lowering their per-package cost.
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