The $490 Trap: Why 2026 Peak Season Planning Must Start Now

The final three months of the year are the most grueling for the logistics industry. To protect your bottom line, peak-season planning isn’t a Q3 task anymore. Planning has to begin in the first quarter.

We often recommend to FreightWise clients to plan for peak after they do their recap or post-mortem on the holiday season. This allows you to be fresh off the prior year and understand what worked and what didn’t.

In 2025, the “Demand Period” for parcel carriers lasted 111 days (late September through mid-January), with surcharges reaching as high as $490.00 per package. For 2026, the risk is even higher due to new cubic-volume rules that effectively penalize shipping air.

Shipping Risk: New Cubic-Inch Thresholds 

As of January 2026, major carriers have implemented stricter cubic-inch thresholds. Parcels that escaped extra fees last year are now triggering Additional Handling or Oversize fees. If you haven’t audited your dimensions since the New Year, you are likely already overpaying.

5 Actionable Strategies to Mitigate Parcel Peak Surcharges

1. Master Your Data Analytics & Look for Outliers

Carriers provide complex invoice data, often with up to 252 data headings per shipment. Most shippers lack the IT infrastructure to analyze this volume of information. This data is really critical to look at when you are recapping the prior year and planning for the future. 

• Solution: What were the key cost drivers? Any gotchas or surprises you had? Any location, business unit, or SKU with significantly higher spend? Look for some of those outliers to try and see if those can be resolved for 2026. You can either do this lightly in-house or you can partner with a parcel expert who uses advanced analytics platforms to model your 2026 volume growth against new cubic requirements. Knowing your “surcharge spend” before it happens allows for better budgeting.

2. Implement “Smart Packaging.”

Many shippers use oversized boxes and fill the gap with dunnage, essentially paying to “ship air.” Not all companies are sophisticated enough to have boxes for retail vs. e-commerce boxes. But looking at packaging and any excess becomes really critical.

• Solution: As your product teams work on developing new products or sales teams re-order products, see if there are any packaging opportunities. Reducing the box size by just an inch or two can move a package outside of surcharge parameters. For example, if your box’s longest side is 96 inches, check if the product can fit into a 95-inch box to avoid the Oversize trigger.

3. Use Multi-Package Shipments for Large Goods

When a package qualifies as “Oversize,” it is often billed at a minimum weight of 90 lbs, even if the actual weight is much lower.

• Solution: Calculate if breaking one large shipment into two smaller packages is cheaper. This can go along with the “smart packaging” concept. But if there is a way to ship something differently to minimize oversize, now is the time to explore that before you enter peak. During peak, the savings on surcharges often far outweigh the cost of a second label.

4. Target “Smart Dates”

Marketing teams may not be aware of specific dates or times when parcel shipments may drastically increase. Work with your marketing team to incentivize or encourage customers to order during non-peak windows.

• Early Bird: While more and more common, getting campaigns to push early-bird discounts before the demand season begins (typically late September) can make a meaningful difference.
• Mid-Season Strategy: In 2025, the most expensive window fell between Nov 23 and Dec 28. Shipping just one week outside this window can save $2.55 to $55.00 per package.
• Post-Peak: Encourage non-critical shipments after the demand season ends (estimated mid-January).

5. Multi-Carrier Models for High-Volume Shippers

If you ship more than 20,000 packages per week, you are subject to additional “peak” tier surcharges.

• Solutions: This one requires some strategy to implement a new carrier and understand if there are other volume thresholds that might be impacted. But transitioning to a multi-carrier model may make sense to keep volume with a single carrier below the surcharge threshold. Or even taking a few SKUs or a specific type of shipment (under 1 lbs, oversize, etc.) to a different carrier can help mitigate some of the parcel peak tier surcharges. Consult with a parcel expert first to ensure your volume shift doesn’t negatively impact your base discounts.

As always, ensuring a positive customer experience during peak season is priority number one, but looking at peak forecasting and prioritization now helps to minimize the disruption later in the year.

If FreightWise can help with a parcel analysis, Contact Us for a complimentary parcel assessment.