Shipping – Transport goods from one place to another.
UPS shipping is not free, but it's pretty cheap. That's because UPS has a very efficient operation that has moved its costs down to appeal to the retail customer since the start of the dot.com revolution. UPS has realized that it is in a high fixed-cost, high-volume business. Its ability to steer market share in its direction has meant that UPS has the volume to impose conditions on its suppliers and customers that would not be available if it weren't for their size. DHL didn't have the same advantages as UPS, as they entered the market a good deal later, and did so from a higher-cost, European base. The DHL argument was somewhat different: if you want to get it there in a very reliable, but not necessarily an inexpensive way, DHL was the way to go. In this respect, DHL pursued the same sales argument as FedEx, which promised to get it to you “absolutely, positively overnight." This was the promise that moved FedEx to over $15 billion in sales, and has now propelled DHL to a strong number three behind UPS and FedEx in the overnight- and very fast delivery segment of the parcel delivery market.
Shipping containers are ripe for the same kind of revolution that FedEx, UPS and DHL brought to the package shipping market. At the moment, shipping containers are parked at customer sites for days, waiting for someone to pick them up, and waiting at the other end for someone to drop them off at the customer's site. Unlike package delivery systems, containers are lost in transit most of the time, with no transparency about their location en route. This situation means that shipping containers and their associated services are a good deal less expensive, per pound shipped or per mile shipped, than the aforementioned services.
Is this situation with shipping containers bound to continue in the future? Probably not. FedEx and others are now looking at that market in the same way that they looked at the package shipping market in the past - ripe for change, and with a customer base that is desperate for better shipping on-time performance.