UPS Quietly Raises Shipping Costs Again — Are You in the Danger Zone?
Hidden Zip Code Changes Could Be Costing You Big
On June 2nd, 2025, UPS again quietly changed “certain origin/destination zip code pairs.”
These adjustments led to both zone increases and, in fewer cases, decreases for certain shipments. However, the vast majority resulted in higher zones and higher costs. This marks the fifth time in just 18 months that UPS has implemented such changes, with previous adjustments made in December 2023, June 2024, October 2024, and March 2025.
No Transparency, No Details, and Big Cost Impacts
Similar to the first four times that UPS implemented these changes, the latest announcement failed to provide any specifics of the changes that were to take place. Therefore, most shippers have no way of knowing what impact these changes will have, or have already had, on their costs, and ultimately, their profit margins.
In an ongoing effort to keep the shipping public informed, ICC has chosen to perform ongoing analysis to help shippers understand the potential impact these changes could have on their bottom lines.
In our analysis, we looked at Zone charts from 75 different origin locations.
Most of the zone charts that we used in our analysis included zip codes that are popular locations for Warehouses, Fulfillment Centers, and Distribution Centers. These included zip codes in the following cities: New York, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Allentown, Atlanta, Memphis, Salt Lake City, and more.
High-level results of our study uncovered the following:
There were 1,081 zone changes, of which 690 or 63.8% were changes to a higher zone. This represents a significant increase in the number of zonal pairs experiencing a higher zone when compared to the last changes that were made in March of this year.
The March changes had only included 588 changes, with 390 increases in Zone. So there was a 77% increase in the number of zip code pairs seeing a zonal increase compared to the last round of changes. This spike in zone increases could signal UPS’s intent to start ramping up the intensity for these types of “difficult to measure” increases.
It is also important to note that the previous analysis that we had completed showed that the zip code pairs that experienced increases were locations with higher populations. This could drive a significant cost increase for some shippers.
Why does this matter? Real-World Impact: Up to 100% Cost Increase
An increase in Zone can have a major impact on the cost to ship a package.
Our analysis has shown that an increased Zone can drive up the published cost of shipping a single Ground package by as much as 25%, as well as 50% for 2nd Day packages, and up to 100% for Next Day Air packages.
Additionally, the number of changes to zip code pairs is beginning to compound, with the number of changes in the thousands since UPS first started making these types of changes.
The bottom line is that the zone chart for your origin zip code looks a lot different today than it did a year and a half ago.
Want to see the cell-by-cell impact or determine the exact impact on your shipping volumes/ cost?
Contact Tim Binkis, Chief Client Success Officer, ICC Logistics Services at TBinkis@ICCLogistics.com