By Josh Dunham
START 2026 ON THE RIGHT FOOT WITH THESE 10 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
’Tis the season to set goals for the year to come; here are 10 areas of focus that will help every shipper thrive in 2026.
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t’s that time, the season when we take stock of the year behind us and prepare for the one ahead. And just like the resolutions that promise a better future in our personal lives, some plans for improvement are broadly applicable. A few are perennial classics, the shipper’s variants of going to the gym, eating better, and spending more time with loved ones. Others reflect the significant changes we saw across the parcel landscape in 2025, a year we can now reflect on. No other year in recent memory, save those during the pandemic, presented shippers with more transformative and disruptive changes. Macroeconomic trends, from high interest rates to lagging consumer sentiment and tariffs, added an
element of uncertainty. And in the face of it, carriers instituted significant changes that significantly impacted shipping operations, strategies, and costs. The most basic of these, and perhaps the most important, was the overall operational approach of carriers, who made it overtly clear what parcels and shipping profiles they want in their networks. Whereas in years past new surcharges, miscellaneous fees, and rules were announced with a formal process, the changes we saw this year came with little and at times virtually no warning. Dynamic pricing, long an aspiration, became more pertinent than ever — a point hammered home by a surge of new accessorial charges that dwarfed the bottom-line impact of the general rates increases (GRIs) that alone have
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increased parcel shipping costs by 27% since 2021. It was, for all intents and purposes, a year unlike any other. With that in mind, I offer the following top 10 New Year’s resolutions for shippers in 2026. 1. Embrace a proactive approach: In years past, while it was not ideal, many shippers could refine their operations at the most basic level, negotiate on an annual basis, and get by. Yes, they would miss out on opportunities — often significant ones — to generate savings. They would also suffer losses when unforeseen surcharges or other variables emerged, but they could in essence still get the job done. In contrast, the dramatic changes we are seeing from carriers today upend that dynamic and