‘Infuriating’: Wait times grow amid Canada Post strike as backlogs, frustration mount

It’s been almost two weeks since Darren Solomon had a working fridge. The appliance’s compressor conked out on Nov. 26 and he’s been waiting for a replacement part ever since.

The supplier he spoke with last month said the company typically receives LG components within a day.

“Day 1 passes, nothing. Day 2 passes, nothing. Day 3 passes, nothing.”

The service company could not even provide him with a tracking number, said Solomon, who lives with his family in Richmond Hill, Ont.

“They said, ‘It’s the Canada Post strike.’”

The delay has forced the Solomons to throw out food and pay for takeout almost daily.

“We have someone in the house with an eating disorder, and this has totally broken their routine. It’s really thrown them off,” said Solomon.

“It’s frustrating and it’s infuriating.”

As delivery backlogs build along with holiday angst, wait times and shipping rates continue to grow for consumers and businesses dealing with the fallout from the Canada Post work stoppage.

The Crown corporation’s shutdown meant that millions of Canadians who receive or send parcels via Canada Post in the lead-up to Christmas have had to turn elsewhere.

In the weeks leading up to Dec. 25, Canada Post typically receives close to double its daily parcel volume.

The Crown corporation says it handled 296 million parcels over the course of 2023, or nearly 811,000 per day, making up 29 per cent of the parcel market. That’s a big hole for private operators to plug.

The spillover to other shipping companies has proven too much for many to bear.

Purolator, UPS, FedEx and Canpar Express are among the major carriers to implement multi-day pauses on shipments from smaller courier companies, according to a client notice from one of them — eShipper — obtained by The Canadian Press. Those platforms handle shipments for tens of thousands of small businesses, which rely on the couriers to secure lower rates than the mom-and-pop shops could get individually.

The temporary halt has caused backlogs throughout the delivery chain.

“We’re actually refusing business,” said Timothy Byrnes, director of parcel delivery firm Jet Worldwide. “You get double the volume, but four times the problems.”

FedEx has also introduced a temporary limit of five packages per drop-off at its retail locations and launched a new late-night shift at some hubs to increase sorting capacity, the company said in an email.

With delivery demand surging, consumers and small businesses have little choice other than to opt for a pricier carrier and endure delays or hold off on sending packages altogether.

Shipping rates for individual packages are often far costlier than the product itself, said Byrnes.

“We work with a company that sells matcha tea products from Japan. We help them with the import,” he said.

“She contacted us saying, ‘Hey, can you help with shipments to the U.S.?’ They normally use Canada Post. We didn’t even give her a rate: ‘I’m telling you, it’s not going to be low enough.’”

The higher cost of private carriers — especially during peak holiday shopping season — is rarely taken on by shippers alone.

“Consumers are also seeing those delivery costs being passed on to them,” said Sinead Gleason, Equifax Canada’s commercial solutions analyst.

Meanwhile, lag times continue to lengthen. In some rural or remote areas, even delayed shipments are out of reach, since only Canada Post serves farther-flung parts of the country.

“A friend of mine lives in a very rural area. She likes to support small and local businesses. And she has had conversations back and forth about the fact they can’t deliver to her,” Gleason said.

“She’s had to cancel orders.”

The Canada Post strike involving 55,000 workers has now hit 25 days. The organization says it is awaiting a response from union representatives to the proposal it handed them on Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2024.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press