Delivery services and technology provider OnTrac is expanding further from its last-mile roots in a big way.
The logistics company has unveiled three new coast-to-coast services as part of its delivery portfolio: OnTrac Express; OnTrac Ground Essentials and 7-Day Play.
OnTrac Express is the firm’s two- and three-day hybrid air-and-ground service launched in partnership with delivery infrastructure platform ClearJet, while OnTrac Ground Essentials is a deferred service designed for brands and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) seeking to ship non-urgent parcels at scale.
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Express combines air zone-skip lanes with OnTrac’s seven-day ground operations and is designed for e-commerce brands that operate from constrained fulfillment networks. According to OnTrac, 51 percent of retailers have not fully regionalized their fulfillment networks, relying instead on one or two fulfillment centers without geographic distribution.
Ground Essentials features transit times that are typically one or two days longer than the company’s standard ground service, which typically takes anywhere from one day to one week depending on location.
The company describes it as an ideal option for shoppers who don’t mind waiting in exchange for free or discounted shipping offers at lower thresholds.
OnTrac says the service’s per-parcel costs are up to 30 percent lower than comparable shipments from national providers, and also doesn’t include the typical $6.10 per package residential delivery surcharge. The service comes as larger competitors like UPS, FedEx and DHL hike residential fees ahead of the holiday season.
“Retailers have told us they need an economy service that doesn’t force a trade-off between cost and coverage,” said Vijay Ramachandran, vice president of marketing, product strategy and marketplaces at OnTrac in a statement. “It gives merchants a distinct economy tier that finally matches scale with savings.”
Both services operate seven days a week and are set to formally launch in early 2026, with enrollment for the early access program now open with a limited waitlist. Origin points for Express will be determined based on waitlist demand.
The third service, 7-Day Play, pairs the seven-day ground service with predictive delivery promises powered by delivery management software platform Fenix Commerce. Fenix integrates with OnTrac’s network to offer precise delivery dates on product detail pages and at checkout.
The solution offers a suite of tools pre-trained on OnTrac’s service data to model service-level outcomes and measure sales incrementality, which is designed to help retailers monetize speed while reducing costs.
The launches help OnTrac further position itself as an alternative to parcel delivery giants UPS and FedEx, with the company already partnering with regional delivery companies to cover 75 percent of the U.S. population and 48 of the top 50 metropolitan areas.
“Inventory costs are rising. Big carriers are tacking on new fees. And postal workshare is in flux,” said Ramachandran. “Retailers are navigating this volatility amid a parcel market where many alternative carriers appear interchangeable and sub-scale.”
OnTrac timed the releases with the launch of its State of Speed research study, which was designed to illustrate how capabilities like predictive delivery dates, seven-day carrier services, and weekend fulfillment are often tied to higher customer conversion and repeat purchase rates.
The survey said that 88 percent of the 150 retailers surveyed still show delivery ranges of four to six business days at checkout despite finding that shoppers are more than twice as likely to abandon carts when shown vague delivery timing.
And just 22 percent of online retailers use predictive delivery dates, while only 25 percent of merchants offer carrier services that run seven days per week.
The company highlighted that most retailers haven’t made strides to improve their supply chains after the Covid-19-driven e-commerce acceleration period concluded.
Over the past 24 months, 65 percent of retailers reported no change in their standard delivery speeds, while another 59 percent said they were not expanding fulfillment networks. Another 23 percent are consolidating their networks instead.
According to OnTrac, seven-day-per-week delivery is consistently underestimated by retailers.
Retailers opting to ship throughout the weekend see double-digit improvements in Net Promoter Score (11 percentage points), customer lifetime value (12 percentage points), and a decrease in abandonment rate (14 percentage points), the survey says.
The cohort of “winners”—defined as the brands in the top 50th percentile for performance indicators including conversion rate, repeat purchase rate and NPS—were twice as likely to use predictive delivery dates and over three times as likely to operate warehouses on a seven-day schedule.
