Will Holiday Shipping Turn into a Halloween Horror Show?

Hidden Inches, Creeping Zones and the Rocks in Your Future

Every Halloween, supply chain professionals are in the midst of holiday shipping. And I can’t help but think of poor Charlie Brown in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” While everyone else gets candy, Charlie Brown looks in his trick-or-treat bag and says those classic words:

“I got a rock.”

And, unfortunately, I’m already hearing that many companies are having a similar Q4 experience with their peak season shipping. Beyond the peak season surcharges I detailed a few weeks ago, UPS & FedEx charge customers based on two things, package weight/dimensions and the distance it travels.

While you’re busy filling your customers’ holiday orders, FedEx and UPS are slipping rocks into your shipping bag. The industry calls those rocks hidden inches and creeping zones. Both affect how much your shipping options cost.

They are kind of like surcharges that multiply like gremlins after midnight.

So the question is: will your Q4 shipping be a trick or a treat?

With the right planning – and help from Tompkins Ventures and our expert partners – you can still transform this holiday season into a treat. But ignore these changes, and you may find your profits vanishing faster than Halloween candy at a middle school sleepover.

This Tiny Terror Torpedoes Parcel Shipping

FedEx and UPS have unleashed a frightening new rule that rounds all package dimensions up to the nearest inch before calculating dimensional weight.

At first glance, that doesn’t sound too scary. What’s an inch between friends?

But here’s the horror story.

A box measuring 12.2” x 10.3” x 6.4” used to round down to 12” x 10” x 6”, for a 6-pound dimensional weight. Now it rounds up to 13” x 11” x 7”, billing at 8 pounds instead.

That one little inch adds 5-12% in costs across thousands of SKUs. Multiply that across your entire holiday order volume, and the hidden inch becomes a full-blown monster.

That’s not just bad luck – it’s a dimensional curse.

This shifts packaging precision from a nice-to-have to a survival skill. The smallest rounding error could haunt your margins all season long.

And this is where Tompkins Ventures partners can turn a trick into a treat. Our experts help companies audit packaging, optimize cartonization and exorcise the ghosts of wasted cubic inches.

How Zones Creep Out Your Shipping Budgets

If the hidden inch is a quick-biting gremlin, zone creep is the slow, creeping dread that sneaks up on you when the lights go out.

Shippers call the distance that a package travels the zone. They determine that zone by matching the zip code you’re shipping from to the zip code you’re shipping to. If you ship a package from New York to California, that’s a Zone 8 package. New York to New Jersey is a Zone 2.

However, in the last 18 months, UPS has quietly reclassified zones five times, reshuffling ZIP code pairs and moving many lanes into higher-cost zones.

What does that mean? A shipment that used to travel a “short distance” might suddenly be classified as long-haul – even if it’s still going from one side of a metro area to another.

It’s like waking up to find your friendly neighborhood has turned into a haunted maze.

Those zone changes can increase shipping costs 25% to 100% depending on service level. And the worst part? Many companies don’t even realize it’s happening. They just assume “rates went up a little.”

But in reality, since UPS began this tactic, the shipping company has enacted thousands of these zone changes.

That isn’t a little change. It’s a zombie-like crawl of cost increases that never die.

Our partners at Tompkins Ventures help companies remap your ZIP-to-zone exposure. They can identify where creep has infected your network and reroute or reclassify shipments to keep your budget from becoming a horror story.

Because no one wants to discover, too late, that their “Zone 4” has turned into a “Zone 7” nightmare.

Tricks, Treats and Death by a Thousand Rocks

Clearly, FedEx and UPS have mastered the art of spooky surprises. We’re a long way from the price war of 2024, where they were trying to lure small businesses.

These days, between dimensional rounding, fuel surcharges and zone creep, they’ve created a labyrinth of hidden costs that even seasoned logistics pros struggle to navigate.

Every time you think you’ve whacked one monster, another pops up. Black Friday and Cyber Monday turn up the shipping volume during the holidays. Which means those costs could grow exponentially, gnawing away at your company’s profit margins. Call it death by a thousand cuts – I mean rocks.

But this doesn’t have to be a horror movie where the hero gets eaten in the final scene. You can fight back – if you know where to look.

Here’s how to keep the monsters out of your holiday shipping budget:

• Audit your packaging now: That “extra inch” could cost you dearly. Work with experts to right-size cartons and reduce dimensional weight creep.
• Remap your ZIP-to-zone exposure: If UPS has moved your shipping zones, you may be paying long-haul prices for short hops. Our partners can show you where those changes lurk.
• Benchmark and renegotiate: Data is your silver bullet. Benchmark your rates against industry averages, and renegotiate contracts that have turned ghoulish.
• Diversify your network: Regional carriers and 3PLs can be your trick-or-treat allies by offering alternatives when the big players get too greedy.

Tompkins Ventures partners specialize in every one of these steps. In past years, they’ve helped companies exorcise hidden costs, identify creeping zones and turn what looks like a horror show into a Halloween treat.

Don’t Get Rocks in Your Shipping Bag

Charlie Brown didn’t have a choice. Every house, every time – “I got a rock.”

But you do have a choice.

You can keep playing by the shifting rules of FedEx and UPS, hoping your luck holds. Or you can take control and build a smarter, leaner, more resilient holiday shipping strategy. One that can tame the shipping gremlins for years to come.

Because when the next round of changes comes – and it will – the companies that planned ahead will be handing out treats to their customers during the holidays for years to come. Everyone else will be digging rocks out of their shipping bags.

Don’t let that be you.

Contact Tompkins Ventures today to connect with partners who can help you expose the tricks, claim the treats and keep your supply chain strong long after the holidays are over.

Related Reading

• How to Escape the Penalty Box of Peak Season Surcharges
• Can a Shipping Crate Eliminate Damage? Yes.
• Privatize the Post Office, or Just Use Supply Chain Design?