The vans running your routes today may not be enough by November. Every signal pointing into this peak season says more volume is coming — and the carriers chasing it are ready to compete on price to get it.
Parcel forecasting firm ShipMatrix pegged the 2025 peak season at roughly a 5% overall volume gain, with FedEx and Amazon Logistics climbing 5% to 8% while UPS and USPS came in closer to flat. That's the baseline feeding into 2026, and the broader trend line points higher: Pitney Bowes' 2026 Parcel Shipping Index projects U.S. parcel volume climbing toward 24.6 billion packages this year, with Amazon Logistics, FedEx, UPS, and USPS still handling roughly 90% of it between them.
The twist for last-mile operators is pricing, not just volume. ShipMatrix's read on 2026 is that the major carriers, still working to win back share lost in prior peaks, are positioning to lower peak season surcharges rather than push shippers on margin. For a DSP or ISP living off route density, that's a mixed signal: more packages moving through the network supports higher stop counts, but carrier discounting upstream tends to translate into pressure on what gets paid downstream to the fleets actually running the last mile.
The operators who come out ahead in a volume-up, price-pressured peak are the ones who know their real cost per stop before the surge hits — not after a rate renegotiation forces the math. Route density gains only help the bottom line if the fleet's cost structure can absorb more stops without more overtime, more deadhead miles, or more vans than the season actually justifies. Capacity planning that starts in October is capacity planning that starts too late. Run your own fleet numbers free at pexara.ai/calculator