Delays Peak During Frost Days
Winter Weather Disrupts Parcel Delivery: Average Delays of 42.2 Per Cent
Amsterdam – During the cold spell in the first week of January, average parcel delays rose to 42.2 per cent. The wintry conditions, with snow and temperatures around and below freezing, coincided with clear fluctuations in parcel delivery. This is according to the Parcel Radar from logistics SaaS platform Wuunder.
Shipments collected at the beginning of the second week of January experienced particularly high delay percentages. Of parcels collected on Monday 5 January, an average of 57 per cent were delayed. On Tuesday 6 January, this applied to 52.2 per cent of collected parcels.
The delay percentages show clear differences between days with varying weather conditions. Temperatures at the beginning of the second week of January, on 5 and 6 January, averaged around -1 degrees Celsius – precisely the days when the highest delays were recorded.
Notably, on 9 January, the day with the heaviest snowfall (locally up to twenty centimetres), the average delay percentage was actually lower at 28.2 per cent. A possible explanation is that temperatures remained above zero that day. By comparison, on 6 January only 3.2 centimetres of snow fell, but frost (averaging -1.3°C) led to a higher delay percentage.
Significant differences in delivery delays are also visible between provinces. The highest delay percentages were recorded in Flevoland (49.3%), Utrecht (47.2%) and Friesland (46.4%). The lowest percentages occurred in Limburg (35.1%), Overijssel (37.3%) and Groningen (37.9%).
When examining snowfall amounts by province, the three provinces with the highest delay percentages saw an average of 5.3 centimetres of snow per day. In the three provinces with the lowest delays, this average was 3.8 centimetres per day.
Comparing the Randstad provinces of Utrecht, South Holland and North Holland with the rest of the Netherlands, average delays in the Randstad reached 45.4 per cent, versus 41.4 per cent in other provinces. This difference may coincide with busy infrastructure in the Randstad combined with snowfall.
Jeroen Gehlen, co-founder of Wuunder: "We see that traffic becomes disrupted by wintry conditions and that accidents and traffic jams occur. This means parcel carriers can't work as quickly. We see this clearly reflected in the data: winter weather has a direct impact on parcel delivery performance. Frost days in particular cause high delay percentages, even when snowfall remains limited. This underscores how vulnerable logistics processes are to weather influences, especially in busy regions. At the same time, these are often force majeure situations and the safety of delivery drivers comes first. For retailers and carriers, it's therefore important to build in extra buffers during such periods in planning and communication towards consumers."
The data is based on orders at Wuunder and concerns domestic shipments in the Netherlands. The data is not based on returns and only concerns B2C shipments.