Canada Post employees returned to work Saturday under a rotating-strike model, ending a two‑week national shutdown but ushering in an unstable operating environment that will ripple through freight and parcel networks across Canada and the cross‑border market. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said walkouts will rotate by location beginning at 6 a.m. local time in each time zone, a tactic meant to keep pressure on the Crown corporation while allowing mail and parcels to move again.
Canada Post warned customers to plan for continued delays as its integrated network restarts and clears the backlog that accumulated during the national stoppage. The company has suspended on‑time delivery guarantees and will not accept new commercial volumes until Wednesday, October 15, to prioritize trapped freight already in the system. It also cautioned that strike activity may hit specific facilities without advance public notice, creating intermittent chokepoints even where carriers see trucks rolling.
The switch to rotating job action is already visible on the ground. CUPW’s first wave of walkouts Saturday targeted four communities — St. Anthony, N.L.; Timmins, Ont.; Fort St. John, B.C.; and Dawson Creek, B.C. — with the union indicating more locals will be added with limited lead time. For carriers and shippers, that means lane‑by‑lane variability rather than a uniform nationwide outage.
At stake is a high‑volume gateway for Canadian e‑commerce and small‑parcel traffic. More than 55,000 postal workers initially walked off the job on September 25; the union contends rotating strikes balance leverage with service continuity, while Canada Post frames the restart as necessary to restore some certainty to customers after a prolonged disruption. Regardless of the rhetoric, capacity at key processing plants will be uneven until the backlog is cleared and pickup acceptance fully resumes.
What this means for trucking and parcel operations:
– Hold-and-release planning: If you inject mail or parcels into Canada Post, treat October 15 as the earliest reliable date for new commercial tenders. Build dwell time into schedules through next week as plants sequence first‑in/first‑out volumes.
– Lane‑level monitoring: With rotating strikes moving city to city, expect sudden slowdowns or gate closures at affected depots. Dispatchers should track local CUPW actions daily and be ready to re-route first‑mile pickups or linehaul transfers to alternative facilities.
– SLA and guarantee resets: Communicate to retail and DTC customers that Canada Post service guarantees are suspended. Shippers relying on time‑definite options should move critical freight to couriers that maintain their own guarantees, understanding that those networks may see spillover demand.
– Returns and reverse logistics: To avoid warehouse pileups, consider short‑term returns diversification (e.g., courier pickups or drop‑off partners) until postal acceptance normalizes. This can prevent reverse flows from bunching when Canada Post reopens the commercial spigot mid‑week.
– Cross‑border coordination: U.S. merchants handing off to Canada Post for last‑mile delivery should extend delivery windows in checkout flows and outbound messaging for Canadian addresses, and, where margins allow, temporarily offer courier upgrades on high‑value orders.
The next 72 hours are about stabilization, not speed. Canada Post says it will prioritize restarting operations safely, clearing trapped volume, and managing rotating disruptions it does not fully control. For carriers, the operational edge will come from granular visibility — watching which depots are up, which are down, and sequencing tenders accordingly until the network regains rhythm.
Sources: FreightWaves, Reuters, Canada Post, Global News
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