By Daniil Davydoff
Following the U.S. parcel delivery market can feel like tracking a race. Tactical moves to increase network capacity, build facilities, and launch tools, as well as strategic changes in leadership and operating models, dominate assessments of which carriers are gaining or losing ground, but political and policy forces are shaping those decisions.
Labor dynamics, global instability, and supply chain resilience and security may ultimately determine which carrier is the winning “tortoise” or the losing “hare” more than commercial and operational considerations.
New labor dynamics are putting pressure on several models. Teamster negotiations are hitting unionized carriers, while fast-growing “alternative carriers” using gig-based delivery models are facing increased scrutiny over compliance with labor protections. That scrutiny is increasingly playing out in court, through lawsuits alleging violations of state labor codes and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Last month, DoorDash and Uber reached a $131.5 million settlement with New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Some alternative carriers and large shipping platforms, including Amazon, have sought to shield themselves from the true cost of carrying fulltime employees by using delivery service providers, but that may not be an option in the future.
New York City’s Delivery Protection Act, supported by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, would require companies to hire core warehouse and delivery workers directly rather than rely on DSPs. Chicago’s version would add licensing, training, and safety requirements.
The result is that no parcel labor model looks politically uncomplicated anymore. Whether you rely on unionized networks, gig platforms, or DSP-based operations, there are new questions about who bears the cost, risk, and responsibility of last-mile delivery and associated operations.
Geopolitics complicate parcel delivery
Links between global politics and domestic parcel delivery are not always obvious at first, but in 2026 the impact of conflict and trade policy is becoming harder to miss.
The Iran war has pushed fuel prices higher, and those elevated costs are expected to persist. FarEye recently reported that 88% of operators say delivery costs are growing as fast as revenue, or faster, with fuel among the top three cost pressures. For shippers, the war has translated into higher fuel surcharges. According to analysis by AFS Logistics, fuel surcharges that were about 9% for UPS and FedEx in 2021 are now above 23% for both carriers.
If cost remains a primary driver of carrier selection then geopolitics is no longer an abstraction. It is becoming a material input into shipper decisions.
Trade policy is creating a similar shift. The permissive de minimis environment helped discount cross-border marketplaces and sellers thrive and supported alternative carriers positioned to serve them. With de minimis now removed, those foreign e-commerce giants face a tougher U.S. outlook even as they make costly investments in local fulfillment to adapt. The political risk may not end there, as suggested by the ongoing FTC investigation into cross-border retailer Shein. For the emerging carriers that grew alongside these platforms and sellers, geopolitics is now taking back some of what it initially gave, pushing them into a more crowded and difficult search for domestic customers.
Political anxiety over dependence on foreign trade is also turning inward, with parcel-market integrity increasingly framed as a U.S. economic security issue. That policy focus is still in an early stage, but the clearest example is Sen. Tom Cotton’s call for the Department of Justice to investigate alternative carriers he argues unfairly threaten U.S. firms, jobs, and data.
Importance of risk management infrastructure
Scrutiny is likely to intensify on the data and compliance front. Less than a week after Cotton’s letter was published, news broke that SpeedX, one of the companies mentioned in it, exposed 840 million customer records in one of the largest delivery-industry data incidents to date. Since then, other incidents have underscored the fragility of delivery networks, including a cyberattack on Boston Scientific, which disrupted its ability to process and ship customer orders and will likely affect its ability to meet some of its targets for the year.
A future reckoning with automation and AI in parcel delivery could push technology regulation and data security compliance even further up the agenda. Several forms of AI — particularly AI analytics and agentic AI — are expected to have high impact on the logistics industry, and many carriers are already investing in AI-enabled technologies, including autonomous applications.
There have not yet been major, well-publicized logistics failures tied directly to AI systems. But as general-purpose models have shown a tendency to fabricate information or behave unpredictably, it is not difficult to imagine similar concerns emerging in parcel operations, where algorithmic decisions increasingly affect routing, fraud detection, customer service, warehouse activity, and delivery orchestration. In that environment, AI will not be treated merely as an efficiency tool; it may become another test of whether parcel networks can be trusted.
Political and policy dynamics do not negate the importance of strategy, cost, reliability, and speed in determining carrier success, but they imply that the next phase of parcel competition may reward a broader set of strengths. As shippers diversify their carrier portfolios, the most durable partnerships will likely depend not only on price or service levels, but also on continuity, regulatory discipline, labor stability, data security, and predictable performance in a less predictable environment.
For carriers, the tech-sector philosophy of “move fast and break things” may no longer be enough. In a market where politics increasingly shapes the rules of the race, the most valuable networks may not always be the fastest movers or the loudest disruptors. They may be the ones built to keep moving when the track changes.
(Daniil Davydoff is senior manager, market intelligence and strategy at DHL eCommerce Americas. His views do not reflect those of his company or FreightWaves. He can be contacted on LinkedIn or at daniil.davydoff@dhl.com.)
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