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Card class: Hero • Category: Shipping & Courier
Side-by-side OTD comparison across ShipTheory’s sub-carriers - feeds the carrier-renegotiation conversation. Hero.

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At a glance

Side-by-side On-Time Delivery rate per underlying UK sub-carrier (Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, Parcelforce, Yodel). The card that justifies why ShipTheory exists: by exposing each sub-carrier’s reliability directly, it lets the operator tune the rate-shop ruleset and feeds carrier-renegotiation conversations with empirical data. 30D window with a per-carrier <90% alert.
What it countsCOUNT(shipments WHERE actual_delivery_date <= expected_delivery_date) / COUNT(delivered shipments) for each sub_carrier over a 30-day window.
API endpointGET /shipments joined with carrier tracking webhook for delivered_at, grouped by sub_carrier.
Delivery success criterionCarrier POD delivered_at <= expected_delivery_date, normalised across the different UK carrier POD models (Royal Mail signature/scan, DPD photo+signature, Evri photo).
On-time thresholdCarrier-promised expected_delivery_date per shipment, no grace. Each sub-carrier’s promise is its own; like-for-like across services within sub-carrier, not across sub-carriers.
Returns / RTOOutbound only.
Service level scopeWithin each sub-carrier, all services pooled. So “Royal Mail” combines Tracked 24, Tracked 48, Special Delivery; “DPD” combines Next Day, Two Day; etc.
The point of the cardShipTheory’s whole reason for being is the rate-shop dynamic across UK carriers. This card is the direct evidence for tuning that rate-shop. The aggregate OTD card hides which sub-carrier is dragging; this card surfaces it.
Renegotiation useQuarterly business reviews with sub-carriers cite this card. A sub-carrier running materially below peer median for 90 days is a renegotiation lever (volume threat, contract revisions, service-tier escalations).
CurrencyNot applicable.
Time window30D (rolling 30-day window per sub-carrier)
Alert triggerany sub-carrier <90%. The card alerts as soon as any individual sub-carrier falls below 90% OTD even if aggregate is healthy.
Sentiment keyon_time_delivery_rate
Rolesowner, operations

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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

The UK home & garden merchant. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days.
Sub-carrierShipmentsDelivered on timeOTD rateAlert
Royal Mail6,5006,17595.0%OK
DPD2,8202,79299.0%OK
Evri2,9602,57587.0%<90%, FIRING
Parcelforce1,1201,07596.0%OK
Yodel38032786.1%<90%, FIRING
All sub-carriers13,78012,94493.9%(aggregate OK)
The aggregate reads 93.9% OTD, comfortably above 90%. The sub-carrier cut surfaces that both Evri at 87% and Yodel at 86.1% are below threshold. Five things to notice:
  1. Aggregate hides two sub-carrier-level problems. Evri at 87% on 21% of volume + Yodel at 86.1% on 3% of volume both being absorbed by Royal Mail (95%) and DPD (99%) on bigger shares. Without this card, the operator sees “shipping is fine”.
  2. DPD at 99% is the renegotiation benchmark. Their structural reliability is the comparator; if any other sub-carrier sits 5+ points below DPD on 30D, the rate-shop can rationally shift volume away. The card is the empirical evidence.
  3. Evri’s 87% is the operative intervention. Most ShipTheory operators respond by tightening the rate-shop ruleset to push Evri-eligible parcels (low-value, non-urgent) to Royal Mail Tracked 48 instead. The cost lift is GBP 0.30 to 0.60 per parcel; the OTD recovery is 5 to 8 percentage points.
  4. Yodel at 86.1% on 380 shipments is structurally fragile. Many ShipTheory accounts exclude Yodel entirely from rate-shop after seeing this card consistently fire on Yodel for 60+ days. The cost saving (Yodel typically GBP 0.20 to 0.40 cheaper than Royal Mail equivalents) does not justify the OTD risk for most mid-market merchants.
  5. The card is the QBR slide. Quarterly business reviews with each sub-carrier should reference 90-day rolling OTD from this card. Royal Mail at 95% on 47% volume share is the loyalty case; Evri at 87% is the renegotiation case; DPD at 99% is the gold-standard reference.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Sub-carrier OTD comparison answers “which carrier is dragging?” Pair with these to act.
CardWhy pair it with Sub-Carrier OTD ComparisonWhat the combination tells you
On-Time Delivery RateThe aggregate counterpart.Aggregate green + a sub-carrier red = the cross-cut is the only place the issue is visible.
Sub-Carrier Volume MixVolume share per sub-carrier.A sub-carrier with low OTD and low share is low-risk; low OTD and high share is operational priority.
Late ShipmentsThe count counterpart.This card answers “where is the OTD coming from”; the late count card answers “how much is it costing”.
Avg Shipping CostCost-vs-reliability trade-off.Together: the rate-shop tuning conversation.
Sub-Carrier OTD by ServiceOne layer deeper, by route.If Evri is dragging, is it Evri Standard or Evri Next Day?
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rateDownstream impact.Sub-carrier OTD drop predicts Shopify refund-rate climb at 7 to 14 days lag.
Cross-connector: bigcommerce.refund_rateSame as Shopify for BC merchants.Same lag.
Cross-connector: customer NPS surveysDownstream sentiment.Sustained OTD drop on a high-share carrier predicts NPS softening over 14 to 30 days.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in ShipTheory’s own dashboard: ShipTheory Dashboard → Reports → Carrier Performance. The portal exposes the same per-sub-carrier OTD with bar comparison, plus drill-down into per-service breakdown. Closest like-for-like view: Last 30 Days, Group By: Carrier. Why our number may legitimately differ from ShipTheory’s portal:
ReasonDirectionWhy
Service-level groupingEitherThe card pools all services within a sub-carrier; the portal sometimes splits Royal Mail Tracked 24 from Tracked 48. Toggle the portal to “all services within carrier” for like-for-like.
Tracking sync lagOurs lower for “today”Royal Mail and Evri tracking webhooks lag 4 to 12 hours during peak; T-2 days fully reconcile.
Promise-date stalenessOurs stricterCard holds carriers to original promise; portal sometimes recalculates after carrier embargo.
In-transit exclusionBoth excludeParcels still in transit are out of both numerator and denominator.
TimezoneBoundary days offCard UTC; portal GMT/BST.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
CardExpected relationshipWhat causes legitimate divergence
Direct sub-carrier dashboards (Royal Mail OBA, DPD insight, Evri Send)Peer measurement of same shipments from carrier side.Carriers track to internal SLA tables, not your stored promise.
shopify.refund_rateDownstream sentiment for the affected sub-carrier’s volume.Refund-rate is order-level, not sub-carrier-level; correlation is soft.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is Evri so consistently below 90%? Structural. Evri’s distributed self-employed-courier model produces variability that the contracted-courier networks (DPD, Royal Mail) do not have. Most ShipTheory accounts running Evri-heavy mix accept this and tier Evri to lowest-value parcels. My DPD share is small (8%). Should I shift more to DPD? Depends on the cost-vs-OTD trade. DPD averages ~30 to 50 percent more per parcel than Evri on equivalent service tier. Shifting volume to DPD lifts OTD but compresses margin. The decision is per-SKU; high-margin items absorb the cost, low-margin do not. How do I use this for sub-carrier renegotiation? Three steps. (1) Pull 90-day rolling OTD from this card per sub-carrier; export to CSV. (2) Pair with monthly volume share and avg cost per sub-carrier. (3) Present in the QBR: “we sent X parcels through you, OTD was Y, peer median is Z, here is the volume threat if Y does not improve”. Carriers respond to evidence, not feelings. Royal Mail strikes, how does the card behave? Royal Mail OTD drops sharply during strike weeks (down 20 to 30 points), then recovers over 4 to 8 weeks. The 30-day window means the strike impact lingers in the card’s reading for ~6 weeks after strike ends. Use the trend view, not the snapshot, during/after strikes. What about service-level filtering, does the card mix Tracked 24 with Tracked 48? Yes, all services within a sub-carrier are pooled. Tracked 24 typically runs 95%+ OTD; Tracked 48 runs 92 to 95%. If your Royal Mail mix shifts to Tracked 48, the card shows Royal Mail “dropping” even though both services are healthy individually. Use Sub-Carrier OTD by Service for the deeper cut. Yodel, should I just turn it off? Common decision at mid-market scale. The cost saving on Yodel is small in absolute terms (GBP 0.20 to 0.40 per parcel cheaper than Royal Mail Tracked 48 equivalents); the OTD risk and customer-complaint volume often does not justify. Most operators tier Yodel to truly low-value, non-urgent parcels only. Christmas peak, all sub-carriers degrade together? Roughly proportionally. All UK carriers run hot through November and December; Evri and Yodel typically the worst (down 10 to 15 points), Royal Mail and DPD hold better (down 4 to 7 points). The relative ordering stays similar but the gap widens. Plan rate-shop adjustments and customer comms for peak. B2B / wholesale, different patterns? Yes. B2B typically uses DPD priority or Parcelforce Express; OTD on B2B-only volume runs 98%+ structurally. The card pools B2B with retail; if B2B mix is material, segment via the per-source cut in the export. What is the “carrier-renegotiation conversation” in the headline? The strategic outcome of using this card. Multi-carrier merchants rotate their carrier mix based on data; this card is the canonical evidence input. The renegotiation conversation either lifts the underperforming carrier’s service or shifts their volume share down. Cross-border (UK to EU), does that affect this card? Yes, but it is invisible if you do not segment. EU export shipments via ShipTheory typically use DPD or Parcelforce; their OTD on EU lanes runs lower than UK domestic (5 to 10 points). If your EU volume is rising, the card may show DPD or Parcelforce OTD slipping; segment the data to confirm.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Sub-Carrier OTD Comparison 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.