DHL executives forecast subdued but strategic 2025 Peak Season amid global trade shifts

Top-level executives at Plantation, Fla.-based global express delivery and logistics services provider DHL shared their thoughts and expectations about the 2025 Peak Season this week, on a company-hosted call, entitled “DHL’s U.S. CEOs Share Peak Season Strategy & Trade Insights.”

The call featured CEOs from the company’s four business units, including: Scott Ashbaugh, CEO, DHL eCommerce Americas; Greg Hewitt, CEO, DHL Express United States; Mark Kunar, CEO, DHL Supply Chain North America; and Tim Robertson, CEO DHL Global Forwarding Americas. The call was moderated by Mirella Muller, Global eRetail & Fashion, DHL Customer Solutions and Innovation.

Key Peak Season-related trends and themes addressed on the call included changes in tariffs, evolving consumer behavior, new sourcing strategies, fluctuating volumes, and evolving customer expectations.

Hewitt explained that that in the lead-up to Peak Season, 2025 has been marked by what he referred to as a constant state of turbulence, which DHL Express U.S. sees in terms of geopolitical volatility, shifting trade alliances, and regulatory changes.

In terms of how Hewitt characterized Peak Season, Hewitt said he expects it to probably be more subdued than how it is historically, noting that DHL Express usually sees a 40%-to-50% lift from the third quarter into Peak Season, noting that is not the case this year and it will likely be closer to a 20%-to-25% lift.

“So, it is still more volume than we see today, and still the need to make sure we have all of the pickup and delivery resources, the aviation capacity, the customer service agents and what, I think, more than any other year, the customs clearance team to make sure there's continuity during the season,” he said. “But it isn't going to require the massive hiring that maybe we've been used to year in and year out. It'll still be declining volume year-over-year, when you have the adjustment for what's happened with the tariffs coming in and the removal of de minimis, but a lift from where we are today. We will be well prepared. We will be well trained, and we'll have the resources in place well before the peak—and we'll be able to be flexible and agile and ready if anything changes, so that we can ensure continuity during this incredibly important time for our customers. Quite often the Peak Season is when they make a lion’s share of their sales and their profits, so we need to be there for them during that time.”

Peak Season planning for DHL eCommerce America kicks off every year in July, when it starts looking at the profile of its customer base and getting a feel for which customers are the types that are projected to have a big surge in volume, said Asbaugh.

Historically, he said that the segment has shipped pharmaceuticals, which don't have a peak, and the ratio it looks at of those largely peaking e-commerce clients versus other business has a big effect into what it sees as the end-state.

“As we look at this year, we see a larger proportion of the network being composed of these types of clients that do have massive increase in the holiday in the holiday period,” said Asbaugh. “We expect at the height of it to see more than double parcel volume with the heaviest weeks and Cyber Monday and beyond. We've designed for the flexibility to support that. Right now, we're running about 2,000 frontline employees in the field, and we'll scale that up to 4,000 for Peak Season. We're prepping extra warehouse space. We've also got larger packages in the network than we did previous years. That takes more floor space and more conveyance systems. And we leverage to a great deal for the air component of our network, DHL Aviation— and we start the discussions with that team very early on to make sure there's sufficient space for moving that volume. We're known as and proud to be the reliable, affordable, sustainable solution in e-commerce market, with that reliability being the first pillar we take very seriously, there's a lot of analytics that goes into it. And so, we are building out actually, for a fairly large peak on our side, just given the mix of the customers that are in our network going into the peak this year.”

For DHL Global Forwarding, Roberston explained that the current state of the market is what he called, “the golden age of uncertainty,” with three dimensions fundamentally being impacted—cost, complexity, and uncertainty—which is what the rise of the tariff landscape is driving.

Looking at Peak Season, he explained that he expects a more atypical peak, adding that the normal peak would typically be done by now.

“A lot of our focus here is really to make sure that we address cost, complexity and uncertainty,  so ensuring, as an example, that we've got charters pre-positioned for the remainder of the year on the new trades [lanes] that we talked about, Vietnam, outbound, also intra-America's opportunities as well, ensuring that our multi modal solutions are well known for our customers, so they can access some of the diversified routing options that we have ramping up in our customs organization,” said Robertson. “This is to ensure that we have highly compliant but also incredible visibility on not just the transportation flows, but also what the landed costs are for our importers. I anticipate that we're going to see some spikes at some point. We're not sure what the sector is going to be, what the trades are going to be, but it's going to require a tremendous amount of flexibility and agility from our frontline organization to react and to support the customers when that happens, and I have no doubt that the team is well prepared for that.”

From the perspective of DHL Supply Chain North America, Kunar observed how the ability to be agile and flexible have been key themes throughout the year and into Peak Season prep and planning, too.

For DHL Supply Chain North America, he said that speaks to the ability to scale up and also the ability to scale down, as customers shift what is important to them and where their supply chains are going.

“We are maintaining visibility through kind of all the touch points of supply chain with some of the tools like My Supply Chain,” he said. “It is also the basics of being connected and communicating, having strong communications with your customers and your operating teams and your employees to make sure that they understand what the demands are going to be going forward. That is just kind of basic blocking and tackling.”