Merr-E Christmas
With expectations of record-shattering orders over the Internet this Christmas, package carriers may want to hire Santa and Mrs. Claus to drive trucks, and some frazzled online retailers will certainly need a team of elves if they want to fulfill orders.
Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., predicts that 8.6 million households will spend $4 billion shopping on the World Wide Web between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. That is up from the $1.5 billion spent by 4.3 million households in 1998. Although electronic commerce makes up a small fraction of the $185 billion that the National Retail Foundation expects shoppers to spend for Christmas, it represents significant, new demand for business-to-consumer shipping.
For most of the major package carriers, it is business as usual as they take the boost in e-commerce parcels in stride. But their trouble during this Yuletide may lie in the retail sector, where heads are spinning among merchants because the increased online traffic has overwhelmed their Web sites and caused shutdowns as shoppers drain inventories of popular gift items.
For the full story, see the Dec. 20 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
 |  Michael James - Transport Topics |
| Online retailers are expected to fill $4 billion worth of orders this holiday season. |
Some of the first-timers and old pros in the digital marketplace and its delivery channels will flourish, while others will be flirting with disaster, according to industry watchers.
 | |
