If you're still sizing your fleet off last year's stop counts, you're already short. Parcel volume keeps climbing, and the operators who haven't recalculated capacity are the ones scrambling for extra routes when peak hits.
Amazon's Q4 2024 earnings showed North America shipping revenue up 10% year-over-year — the closest available proxy for DSP volume growth, since Amazon doesn't break out DSP stop counts directly. FedEx's own Ground segment posted a smaller but still positive signal: total average daily volume grew 1% in FY2024, with Ground commercial volume up 3%, per FedEx's 10-K filed with the SEC. Census Bureau retail sales data shows e-commerce climbing to roughly 17.9% of total retail by Q4 2024, up from 15.6% two years earlier — the structural tailwind behind both numbers.
Pexara fleet benchmark data uses an 8% year-over-year blended growth rate as its base-case default for DSP demand modeling, built off these carrier and retail inputs, with a range of 4% in a slow scenario to 12% in a high-growth scenario. That's below Amazon's own 10% shipping revenue growth, which accounts for the reality that not all of that revenue growth converts one-for-one into DSP route volume — some comes from rate increases and network redistribution rather than pure stop growth.
The planning implication is straightforward: an operator running flat headcount and flat van count against 8% underlying demand growth is quietly increasing stops-per-route and hours-per-driver without deciding to. That shows up as scorecard pressure and driver burnout before it shows up as a line item. Capacity planning built on last year's numbers is already stale by the time peak season arrives.
Know your real cost per stop before your next rate negotiation: pexara.ai/calculator