The Current Landscape: A 10-Player Scramble
The U.S. cross-border e-commerce last-mile delivery sector is currently a chaotic battlefield. Approximately ten China-backed enterprises are aggressively building networks—establishing warehouses, expanding fleets, and heavily subsidizing services. The key questions remain: Who can survive, and who can achieve profitability?
Currently, industry leaders like GOFO and UniUni maintain steady daily volumes of around 1 million orders. However, virtually all players are bleeding cash due to several fundamental challenges:
- Network Buildout: Establishing warehouses, trunk lines, and sorting centers requires massive initial investment.
- Driver Acquisition: Low-density volume makes driver retention difficult without substantial incentives.
- Price Wars: Subsidizing volume is the primary, often costly, growth strategy.
- Market Scale Disparity: The U.S. processes 70–80 million parcels daily, compared to China's 500 million. The limited U.S. market, coupled with USPS dominance, means the remaining growth is fiercely contested.
In short, a volume of one million daily orders—considered "small-scale" in China—is currently insufficient to break even in the U.S. market.
The Profitability Threshold: Why $2 Million Daily Orders is the Magic Number
Achieving a sustainable last-mile model in the U.S. relies on a single ironclad rule: profitability is virtually unattainable below a daily volume of 2 million orders.
Why the 2-million threshold? It’s the minimum scale required to initiate a “positive cycle” within the crowd-sourced system:
- Driver Efficiency: Drivers must complete "multi-stop, multi-package" trips to make sufficient income.
- Density: Route density must be high enough to absorb and mitigate fuel and labor costs.
- Network Utilization: Consistent warehouse and network utilization is essential to prevent fixed costs from destroying margins.
Failing to meet this scale triggers the "death spiral": Drivers don't earn → Driver attrition → Network instability → Volume decline → Higher costs.
Conversely, reaching the 2 million daily order mark allows an enterprise to enter the virtuous cycle: Driver retention → Network stability → Price reduction capability → Larger scale.
The harsh reality is that the U.S. market, predominantly serving China-based sellers and platforms, can realistically support a maximum of three players operating at this 2M-order scale. Any more will lead to destructive competition over drivers, network capacity, and customers, resulting in a sector-wide price war and universal loss.
The Enduring Force: USPS
It is a misconception that the rise of China-backed crowd-sourced networks will marginalize traditional U.S. carriers. The USPS (United States Postal Service) will not disappear; it will remain an irreplaceable cornerstone of the American logistics landscape.
Due to the immense size and dispersed population density of the U.S., remote and low-density areas must rely on the USPS.
- Crowd-Sourced Networks will focus on: Urban areas, high-density routes, and e-commerce hotspots.
- The USPS will handle: Low-density suburban/rural areas, policy-mandated coverage zones, and remote regions.
This leads to the most logical and realistic Three-Layer Final Structure for U.S. last-mile delivery:
- 3 China-Backed Crowd-Sourced Networks: Dominating high-density, urban core areas.
- USPS: The national baseline, covering all remote and low-density regions.
- Amazon Logistics: The captive ecosystem serving Amazon’s needs.
Conclusion
The ultimate competition in U.S. last-mile logistics is not about "who can subsidize the most," but "who can first illuminate the American map with the density of a 2-million daily order network."
No more than three entities will achieve this. Those who fail to reach this critical scale, regardless of their current speed, will ultimately be dragged down by the inescapable realities of scale and cost. The major shakeout in U.S. last-mile logistics has only just begun.