The change will take place Sunday, August 21, FedEx (FDX) announced Friday.
During the pandemic the company had expanded Sunday service to 95% of US homes, a response to “the exponential growth of e-commerce,” FedEx said in a statement. But “as economic conditions have shifted,” it’s scaling the service back to 80% of homes.
FedEx Ground handles the majority of the company’s online purchase shipments business, but it’s a crowded field with competition from Amazon’s (AMZN) own in-house delivery service, the US Postal Service and UPS (UPS).
Even before Friday’s announcement, FedEx Ground had already been trimming some of the lower-priced, less time-sensitive “economy” shipments to homes.
Despite the challenges for that line of business and a drop in the number of shipments at FedEx Ground, the unit’s sales were up in the most recent quarter — thanks largely to charging shippers an additional fee for fuel. Most other trucking companies have also introduced fuel surcharges because of record-high diesel costs.