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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Shipping & Courier

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At a glance

Count of shipments dispatched in the last 7 days where the actual delivery date exceeded the carrier-promised delivery date, judged against the underlying carrier (Royal Mail, DPD, Hermes/Evri, Parcelforce, Yodel, etc.) that ShipTheory’s rate-shop selected for that label. ShipTheory is a UK-focused aggregator and rate-shopper for mid-market 3PL and direct merchants; the late-count behaviour reflects which sub-carrier won the rate-shop and how that carrier’s UK network performed.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your ShipTheory data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK mid-market home & garden DTC merchant using ShipTheory to rate-shop across Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, and Parcelforce. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days (5 Mar 26 to 11 Mar 26). The card reads 210; the share is 5.7%, just over the >5% of total alert. Five things to notice:
  1. Evri (92 of 210) and Yodel (14 of 14) drag the average disproportionately. Evri Standard at 9.8% on 25% of volume and Yodel at 11.7% on 3% of volume contribute outsize share. The diagnostic next step is Sub-Carrier OTD Comparison, which is the operative card for this merchant.
  2. The aggregate masks the lever. ShipTheory’s rate-shop ruleset can be tightened to push more low-value parcels off Evri to Royal Mail Tracked 48 (a few pennies more per parcel, much better OTD). The aggregate alert is the trigger; the per-carrier card is the action.
  3. Royal Mail at 4.8% is healthy for a UK mass-market carrier. Tracked 24/48 services are the workhorse of UK ecommerce; sub-5% late share is achievable. If Royal Mail starts climbing above 6%, the issue is usually national (postal industrial action, weather), not your account.
  4. DPD at 1.9% is the quality benchmark. DPD’s UK network is consistently the most reliable of mass-market parcel carriers; late share rarely exceeds 3% even during peak. If DPD volume is small (your rate-shop only picks them for high-value), use them as the “if I paid more” baseline.
  5. The 14 Yodel lates on 120 shipments is fragile. Yodel’s UK service has been historically inconsistent; many ShipTheory accounts exclude Yodel from rate-shop entirely, accepting higher cost on Royal Mail Tracked 48 in exchange for predictable OTD. Worth re-evaluating if Yodel keeps appearing in the alert mix.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Late count is the headline; for ShipTheory the diagnostic flow goes straight to per-carrier comparison.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in ShipTheory’s own dashboard: ShipTheory Dashboard → Reports → Delivery Performance → Late Deliveries. The portal exposes the same per-shipment list with carrier filter and sub-carrier OTD comparison alongside. Closest like-for-like view: Last 7 Days, All Carriers, All Services. ShipTheory also offers a CSV export of late shipments with carrier, service, recipient postcode, and gap-vs-promise. Why our number may legitimately differ from ShipTheory’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is this card more useful for ShipTheory than for a single-carrier merchant? Because the per-carrier breakdown is meaningful. A single-carrier merchant has only one lever (talk to that carrier). ShipTheory merchants have rate-shop rules across 5 to 8 UK carriers; the late count combined with the per-carrier breakdown directly drives rule changes, which is the operational lever. Why is Evri (Hermes) frequently the worst performer? Structural. Evri’s UK network operates on a courier-density model with smaller sortation hubs and self-employed delivery drivers; reliability is good in metro areas but inconsistent in rural regions. Many ShipTheory accounts use Evri only for low-value parcels where the cost saving justifies the OTD penalty; high-value parcels rate-shop to Royal Mail Tracked or DPD. My account excludes Yodel entirely. Should I exclude Evri too? Trade-off question. Evri is materially cheaper than Royal Mail or DPD for parcels in the 1 to 3 kg range; for low-margin SKUs that price gap is meaningful. Most operators tier Evri to specific weight bands and customer postcode reliability tiers, rather than excluding entirely. The card is the empirical evidence for the rate-shop tuning conversation. UK industrial action, how do I read this card during disputes? Royal Mail experiences periodic strike action; the card reads sharp spikes during strike weeks. Pre-baseline by raising the alert threshold for the affected window (e.g. >12% during known strike days) and rate-shop temporarily away from Royal Mail to DPD/Evri/Parcelforce; the trade-off is higher cost but maintained OTD. Christmas peak. UK pattern? UK Christmas peak is mid-November through 23 December. All sub-carriers degrade 5 to 12 percentage points; Evri and Yodel typically the worst, Royal Mail and DPD hold better. Plan: raise alert threshold to >10% for the Christmas window, communicate wider despatch-by dates in checkout copy, and shift premium parcels to DPD or Royal Mail Special Delivery. The portal shows a parcel as “delivered” but recipient says they did not receive it. How do I file? Three usual paths. (1) Carrier-side claim through ShipTheory’s claims module (works best when carrier scan is incorrect). (2) Customer-side refund first, claim afterwards. (3) Police report for likely-theft cases. The card flags the late count; recovery happens via Open Claims. My ShipTheory rate-shop rules look right but the late count keeps climbing. What now? Audit the data behind rate-shop. Five usual culprits: (a) recipient postcode data quality issues (mistyped postcodes), (b) weight/dimension inaccuracy at booking causing rate-shop to pick wrong service, (c) carrier capacity issues that ShipTheory’s quote does not yet reflect, (d) seasonal embargo declarations the rate-shop has not absorbed, (e) sub-carrier service level changes (Evri occasionally rebrands services without changing API). Returns and RTO, where do they live? Returns Easy Print and RTO appear in Returned to Sender, not here. Failed-and-recovered parcels do count as late if eventual delivery exceeds promise. B2B / wholesale, are those parcels different? Yes. B2B typically uses palletised or DPD priority services with stricter promises. The card pools them with retail; if your B2B mix is material, segment via the data in the export to read separately.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Late Shipments is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across ShipTheory and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.