UPS, FedEx, OnTrac, Amazon Shipping, and the United States Postal Service (USPS) have all published peak pricing for the 2026–27 season. Four of the five raised a demand surcharge, a per-package fee that appears on its own invoice line during a defined window. USPS raised the published rates on Priority Mail, Ground Advantage, Priority Mail Express, and Parcel Select for the season instead, so no separate line appears on the invoice at all. That difference determines what you can negotiate and how much of the increase you can see before it reaches your budget.
The charges also start at different times. OnTrac runs the longest window in the market, 112 days from September 26 to January 15, at one flat rate for the whole season. UPS begins charging demand fees on additional handling and oversize on September 27, and FedEx on September 28, but the per-package residential fees do not begin until October 25 for UPS and Amazon and October 26 for FedEx. If your volume runs bulky, you pay peak pricing for four weeks before a small-parcel operation pays anything. The USPS increase runs October 4 through January 17.
Per-package pricing converged at the top of the market. UPS, FedEx, and Amazon all raised residential ground from $0.40 to $0.50 in the shoulder weeks, then separated at peak: $0.75 at UPS and Amazon, $0.80 at FedEx. The widest gap in the market is in deferred service, where FedEx Ground Economy reaches $4.05 per package against $0.75 for UPS Ground Saver, the product it competes with directly. Amazon matched UPS to the penny and applies the fee to every package you ship, commercial included. USPS moved hardest on lightweight long-zone parcels, where Ground Advantage 0–3 lb. to Zones 5–9 rose 57.1 percent, the largest single increase across all five carriers.
The largest number in the season, however, reaches only part of the market. Once your weekly volume clears 20,000 residential packages and 105 percent of your June average, UPS and FedEx apply higher-volume tiers that run from $1.75 to $8 per ground package and fall outside most contracted caps. A business at four times its June volume in December pays $8 against the $0.50 standard fee. OnTrac, Amazon, and USPS have no equivalent mechanism, so any volume moved off the national carriers in your heaviest weeks leaves the tiers entirely.
Your most expensive carrier depends on the shape of your packages and the shape of your year rather than on the headline rate. The report runs one national apparel retailer's 472,823 residential packages from September 26 to January 17 across all five schedules on identical volume: $1,918,415 at UPS, $1,917,122 at FedEx, $781,659 at OnTrac, and $260,053 at USPS. That is a 7.4-times spread on the same packages, before any negotiated concession. Coverage and service limits mean no single operation could run all five networks, so read the comparison directionally. Before you finalize a peak budget, confirm which of your parcels cross the dimensional and cubic thresholds in your current agreements. A package that fell outside additional handling last year can fall inside it this year with nothing about the box having changed.
TransImpact built the 2026–27 Multi-Carrier Peak Comparison Report so you can see all five schedules side by side, including how each carrier's timing, per-package fees, accessorials, and volume triggers compare, and which cost profile matches your operation. Download it here.