UPS adds Saturday delivery to speed e-commerce operations

The parcel giant and third-party logistics provider has begun offering Saturday pickups and deliveries for the first time in select markets and plans to expand the program to nearly 4,700 U.S. cities by the end of 2017.    UPS Inc. is adding Saturday pickups and deliveries in an effort to accelerate e-commerce shipping operations, the company said in a statement.
   The parcel giant and third-party logistics provider last year began offering Saturday pickups and deliveries for the first time in select markets and plans to expand the program to nearly 4,700 U.S. cities by the end of 2017.
   UPS began testing the Saturday delivery program in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Los Angeles in 2016, and this month will begin broader deployment to 15 additional metropolitan areas including New York, Chicago and Boston. By 2018, the company plans to expand coverage to more than 5,800 cities and towns in the United States.
   The expansion will significantly reduce transit times for parcel shipments and create more than 6,000 new jobs at the company, according to UPS.
   “Online retailers stand to benefit from fewer lost sales due to abandoned online shopping carts, enhanced ship-from-store options and fewer items being out of stock,” the company said in a statement. “In the UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, retailers report that 46 percent of customers abandon a shopping cart for reasons that include the shipping time taking too long, and 62 percent of shoppers select ground delivery.”
   “The addition of another ground operations day more efficiently utilizes our existing delivery network and offers customers an even faster ground delivery solution,” added UPS Chief Marketing Officer Teresa Finley. “This is an exciting addition to our suite of services. We are confident that it will help our customers capture market growth.”