Parcel Cost Optimization
Your carriers won’t show you the benchmark.
We work with e-commerce brands shipping $250K+ annually to negotiate lower rates on existing carrier contracts. Performance fee only. No upfront cost.
The benchmark gap
Brands we audit are typically overpaying by 10–30% — even after a recent carrier negotiation.
$1.4B in benchmarked shipping data.
- $1.4B
- Live parcel data benchmarked
- 10–30%
- Typical parcel cost reduction
- 30%
- Success fee, no upfront cost
- 90 days
- To your first refund cycle
Every brand we audit is overpaying.
Every. Single. One.
Larger brand
17%
in savings
$1M+/year recovered
Smaller brand
25%
in savings
$100K/year recovered
Different sizes. Different volumes. Same story.
Our process
Keep your carrier. Lower the rate.
No software to install, no carrier to switch. A focused engagement that pays for itself out of what we recover.
- 01
Discovery
A 30-minute call to understand your shipping profile — carriers, volume, lanes, and where margin is leaking.
- 02
Audit
We pull 12 months of carrier invoices and benchmark every line item against $1.4B of live shipping data.
- 03
Benchmark report
You see exactly where the leakage is — category by category, surcharge by surcharge. No guesswork.
- 04
Negotiation + continuous audit
We renegotiate on your existing contracts and monitor every invoice ongoing, so the savings hold.
Ideal client profile
Where parcel costs move the margin.
We work with e-commerce brands at $5M–$500M in annual revenue, shipping $250K+ per year with FedEx, UPS, or DHL — in the verticals where shipping is a real line on the P&L.
Home & Furniture
DIM weight, oversized parcels, and LTL-hybrid pricing make this the most over-surcharged category we see.
Apparel
High return rates mean double-shipping costs and accessorial charges that quietly compound across millions of parcels.
Food & Beverage
Heavy parcels and temperature-control surcharges leave wide gaps between billed and benchmarked rates.
Sports & Outdoor
Oversized gear and a sharp Q4 peak expose seasonal surcharge structures most brands never renegotiate.
Representative outcomes
What the audit finds.
Anonymized results from recent engagements. Every brand had already negotiated with their carrier before we started.
$2.7M
recovered
$25M home furniture brand — 19-month engagement
$250K
found
$200M apparel company — surcharge audit
18%
average reduction
Across audits completed in 2024
About North Reed
A specialist practice.
North Reed is a specialist consulting practice focused on parcel cost optimization. We work with a small number of brands each year, on a performance-fee basis — we are paid only when we recover savings.
North Reed is a certified Threecolts Agency Partner. Threecolts is the e-commerce intelligence platform behind the data benchmarks we use. The partnership gives our clients access to over $1.4B in live shipping data across FedEx, UPS, and DHL — the largest parcel benchmark in e-commerce.