Small retailers eat soaring shipping bills as holiday season hits
Shipping labels that cost small sellers about $4.50 last year are now running near $6, and fuel-driven rate hikes are chewing through holiday margins. Amazon's shipping expenses rose 11% in the third quarter, air cargo is up 43% year over year, and some owners are passing return-shipping fees to customers for the first time. Analysts expect a record shipping-cost year, with distress coming for weak retailers in early 2026.
Jenni Shields pulled up to her local U.S. Postal Service office in Kansas City, Kansas, last month with a routine batch of orders and got sticker shock: labels were averaging nearly $6 apiece. A year earlier, the Evie Pearl Handmade owner was paying around $4.50. When she started selling handmade hair accessories eight years ago, shipping ran $2.93 an order.
With fuel prices climbing since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, the cost of moving goods by sea, air, rail and road has jumped across the board. Global air cargo is running about $3.37 per kilogram, up 43% from a year earlier, according to transportation marketplace Freightos. Freightos research head Judah Levine said the squeeze comes from fuel plus heavy demand for fast shipping of data-center hardware — and that's before last-minute holiday packages even hit the sky.
TopicsJenni Shields · Evie Pearl Handmade · Todd Shelton · Amazon · Freightos · UPS · National Retail Federation · Bain & Company
Source: cnbc.com
Written by Paparazzi with AI. Not financial advice.
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