2026 Carrier Rate Increases: Why 5.9% Isn’t Your Number

The headline number this year is 5.9 percent. UPS and FedEx both announced it as the average base rate increase for 2026. But Nate Skiver, founder of parcel consultancy LPF Spend Management, says most shippers misread it, because 5.9 percent is an average across every customer, and almost no one is the average. Skiver spent 17 years inside retail transportation, starting at Abercrombie in 2007, building an $80 million parcel program that generated more than $10 million in savings, leading parcel strategy for a $15 billion apparel retailer, and running global order management supporting a $900 million e-commerce business. In 2019 he left to found LPF Spend Management so he could share that experience with more than one company at a time. Today he is one of the most-read parcel voices on LinkedIn, posting daily since 2021, and publishing a free weekly newsletter called Special Delivery.

The 5.9 percent headline is not your increase

When UPS and FedEx communicate a general rate increase, the 5.9 percent figure is the average increase across all of their customers’ volume for a service like ground. If your volume mix is not precisely the average, your actual increase will differ. Skiver walked through a UPS ground example: most weight and zone cells land near 5.9 to 6 percent, but the 6 to 10 pound range rises only about 5.4 to 5.5 percent. A shipper whose volume concentrates there might see 5.6 or 5.7 percent in total. The way to find your number is unglamorous. Build a pivot table: take your volume, pivot it by billable weight and zone, get your package counts, multiply by the new 2026 rates, and compare against the same volume on 2025 rates. Parcel spend management software can do it for you, but Skiver says the do-it-yourself version is exactly that simple.

UPS: effective December 22, 2025

UPS pulled its GRI forward to December 22, ten days before the year turns, squeezing about ten more days of revenue into 2025. Skiver half-jokingly gives them credit for it, then turns back to the math. Ground base rates average about 5.7 percent for the one to ten pound range. But that is before the extras. A fuel surcharge table change effective January 5 adds 1 percent to the fuel percentage, and fuel applies to nearly every charge on the invoice, so Skiver calls it effectively a 1 percent total rate increase on top of the GRI. That is the tenth fuel surcharge increase in a little over two years, and he predicts another one no later than the end of February 2026. Then come the surcharges with criteria changes in January: additional handling and large package, averaging 7 to 7.5 percent, with new criteria that could make much more volume subject to fees of $40, $50, even over $100 per package. Delivery area surcharges rise 6.5 to 7.5 percent with changing zip code lists, and residential surcharges rise 6.6 to 6.9 percent. Skiver’s math: ground at 5.7 percent plus fuel at 1 percent plus rising surcharges lands a lot of shippers near 7 percent all-in.

FedEx: effective January 5, with a fuel increase already live

FedEx looks similar, with the same 5.9 percent average base increase and residential home delivery running 6 to 8 percent (Skiver cites 8.4 percent for the residential piece). But FedEx snuck in its fuel move early: a 1.5 percent fuel surcharge increase, announced the last week of November and effective December 1, 2025, landing on top of peak demand surcharges during the busiest shipping month of the year. Delivery area and additional handling/oversize surcharges get January criteria changes at FedEx too, mirroring UPS. The two carriers’ pricing elements are often identical, Skiver notes, and this GRI cycle is no exception. For big and bulky shippers, his advice is the same for both: read the new criteria now, package more efficiently if you can, and negotiate or look for alternatives, because very few carriers handle oversized volume at national scale.

USPS: January 18, and the lightweight shocker

The Postal Service increased package rates twice a year now, in July and January, so the January 18 increase compounds on top of the July one. Priority Mail rises 5.8 percent overall and 6.6 percent for one to five pounds, the range where most companies use it. Ground Advantage is the headline. Rates under one pound rise 12.2 percent on average, and for packages of eight ounces and under the increase is 20.7 percent. Skiver says few if any carriers can compete with USPS pricing at that weight, so the Postal Service is maximizing revenue where it faces the least competition. Jewelry and accessory sellers are the ones who will feel it most. For one to 70 pounds, the average is 5.7 percent, but the spread is wide: one to seven pounds rises 7.2 percent overall and 8.5 percent for zones five through eight, the longer distances. The eight to 20 pound band averages 4.4 percent, with no increase at all for zones one through four, a break Skiver found genuinely surprising, since heavier parcels are not what the postal network wants. Parcel Select, the product DHL eCommerce and other work-share partners use, rises a more ordinary 5 to 6 percent.

What to do about it

Skiver is blunt that there is no five-step recipe to avoid the GRI. But there is a first step, and it is not optional: assess the actual impact on your own costs, by weight band and zone, not the headline average. If you can do that analysis yourself, do it. If not, that is a good reason to find a partner who can. From there, the options depend on what the numbers show. Renegotiate part of your contract. Evaluate alternative carriers, especially for the weight bands where USPS’s increases are steepest. Or change operations: packaging more efficiently can dodge some of the worst surcharges. With many more carrier options and better multi-carrier technology than existed even five or six years ago, Skiver says more shippers are designing programs intentionally instead of defaulting to shipping everything with UPS or FedEx, and that trend will continue.

The memes are a strategy, not a joke

Midway through the episode, Timur pulls up Skiver’s LinkedIn memes, and Skiver explains the method. Parcel is a niche topic with a short list of people who love it, so humor is how he stops the scroll before delivering the information. The Ron Burgundy meme was about demand surcharges. The Grinch in a purple Santa suit, generated in one Google Gemini prompt, announced the FedEx fuel surcharge increase. An AI-generated image of the UPS and FedEx CEOs copying each other’s homework drew a flood of engagement, until Gemini changed its policy on images of specific people two days later. He admits the overused one, the Amazon money furnace GIF, accounts for three of his top five posts ever, with the top one at 297,000 impressions. His cadence: two to three memes a week at most, Friday afternoons. The rest is daily substance, consolidated into a large PDF of all his posts that he gives away, with a nominal charge on one edition, so shippers can search back through years of carrier market share data and rule changes. Skiver got into content by accident in 2021, but the motive was real: inside large organizations, parcel is often not prioritized, and he wanted to give it visibility. Five years later, he says, the autonomy is the reward. If something does not go well, he owns it. And the industry gets one of its most useful free resources.

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This post is based on the Logistics Remix episode “The Holiday Special” with Nate Skiver, Founder of LPF Spend Management. The views are the guest’s and the host’s own.