{"id":26578,"date":"2026-05-29T17:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/26578\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T17:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:57:16","slug":"dhls-parcel-unit-is-chasing-bigger-brands-and-usps-is-how-it-plans-to-get-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/26578\/","title":{"rendered":"DHL\u2019s Parcel Unit Is Chasing Bigger Brands, and USPS Is How It Plans to Get There"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The United States Postal Service<\/a> (USPS) is expanding its partnership with DHL\u2019s parcel delivery division with a new multi-year deal that is expected to generate more than $10 billion.<\/p>\n

With the agreement, USPS<\/a> will handle more last-mile deliveries for DHL<\/a> eCommerce, which aims to expand its footprint in the U.S. The German logistics giant also seeks to attract larger clients and facilitate more international volumes into the USPS network. The parties have not disclosed the length of the deal.<\/p>\n

More from WWD<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s announcement is not just about one contract,\u201d Postmaster General David Steiner said in a media briefing Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s an example of the kind of Postal Service we\u2019re building: More collaborative, more capable, and better positioned for long-term success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the exclusive partnership, all of DHL eCommerce\u2019s last-mile domestic parcels will be delivered through USPS. DHL eCommerce handles nationwide pickup and sortation across its 19 fully automated hubs, and leverages the Postal Service\u2019s final-mile network, which reaches more than 41,550 ZIP Codes and more than 170 million delivery<\/a> points six days a week.<\/p>\n

Scott Ashbaugh, CEO of DHL eCommerce Americas, said the partnership is attractive to customers due to addition of new service options on top of the main USPS offerings, which include Priority Mail and Ground Advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a pretty big gap between those two, and so if you need something that\u2019s in the middle in terms of price and speed, we fill in that gap with both our range-definite two-to-five day Expedited product and our two-to-three day Expedited Max product,\u201d Ashbaugh told Sourcing Journal. \u201cWe do everything possible to make it as economical as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

DHL eCommerce has traditionally been focused on transporting high volumes of smaller packages between four and eight ounces. But Ashbaugh said the new agreement has enabled the unit to shift to the one-pound-and-over space, thus allowing them to charge more competitive rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting more confident in our ability to ship heavier and bigger packages than we had in the past\u2026anywhere between two and eight pounds, or really even up to 10, where we can be much more aggressive,\u201d Ashbaugh said. \u201cThat often plays in the sphere of some of these bigger brands. Rather than winning a lot of medium-sized accounts, we\u2019re going to start seeing bigger brands move into our network, because we\u2019re finding all the pain points they have currently and addressing them one by one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

On the USPS side, the beleaguered carrier sees the expanded partnership as a win as it seeks a turnaround.<\/p>\n

After years of hemorrhaging cash, the USPS has sought to prioritize revenue growth<\/a> under Steiner. Late last year, the national courier sought to draw more volume into its last-mile delivery network by opening a bidding process<\/a> for retailers, brands and logistics providers that would give them access to its 18,000 \u201cdelivery destination units.\u201d These DDUs are the last stop before mail gets delivered to homes and businesses.<\/p>\n

The postal service recently reupped a deal with its top customer, Amazon<\/a>, but that partnership is dialing down the volume USPS will deliver for the e-commerce giant. And after a brief breakup<\/a> last January, USPS also entered a new agreement with UPS last October that resulted in the agency delivering 977,000 parcels for the Atlanta-based logistics giant\u2019s low-cost Ground Saver service in the first quarter. UPS expects to expand that number to 1.5 million daily packages by the second quarter.<\/p>\n

DHL, Amazon and UPS represent the Postal Service\u2019s three largest customers for last-mile delivery<\/a>, with Steiner noting in the briefing that the firms reel in more than $8 billion in revenue each year for the courier.<\/p>\n

USPS says it will run out of cash<\/a> by early 2027, with Steiner stressing that the agency needs Congress to lift its statutory borrowing limit that has been in place since 1992 from $15 billion to $34.5 billion. On Tuesday, Steiner placed a freeze on nonessential spending at the Postal Service, impacting areas including hiring and travel.<\/p>\n

While the entities have partnered for 25 years, they have typically worked together on a year-by-year basis. But after the USPS leadership turned over to Steiner, DHL decided to shift its own approach to instead work out a multi-year contract.<\/p>\n

Ashbaugh described the new USPS brass as \u201cmuch more forward-thinking than they had been in many years past, and maybe a little bit more like business success-minded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO stressed that DHL eCommerce had the opportunity to build a wider physical ground footprint in the U.S., acquire another last-mile logistics provider or partner with an alternative carrier.<\/p>\n

But after weighing its options, Ashbaugh said the USPS model was the best fit for the unit going ahead.<\/p>\n

Best of WWD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States Postal Service (USPS) is expanding its partnership with DHL\u2019s parcel delivery division with a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21057],"tags":[27166,26693,21073,21072,26621,27165,26697,27023,26694],"class_list":["post-26578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dhl","tag-ashbaugh","tag-david-steiner","tag-deutsche-post","tag-dhl","tag-dhl-ecommerce","tag-postal-service","tag-scott-ashbaugh","tag-the-postal-service","tag-united-states-postal-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}