Judy McReynolds
Analyst · Stephens Inc. Please proceed.
Well, I mean, it's certainly a good opportunity, Jack. And I think that it's illustrated by what's been happening. We had a tremendous amount of growth in first quarter, even before the pandemic started. So that tells you something right there. I think our residential delivery shipments related to e-commerce in the first quarter were up 12%. And in second quarter they were up 35%. And so, it really accelerated, but I think it's important to look back at that first quarter data point, because that was a good level of growth before the pandemic. And I think this whole, stay-at-home change that's occurred with people has really contributed to greater comfort with having those kinds of transactions, these larger type items, whether it's -- the ones that I mentioned, exercise equipment or storage sheds, or if it's outdoor furniture or it's bigger items like televisions and other inside the house items, I think just because of the need to do it, I think more people are doing it and they're more comfortable with it. And one of the things that's been great, I think advantage for us that we've encountered is that we've been in this business for a long, long time. I mean, we -- our U-Pack business was started in 1997. So, all the way back then we had to get comfortable with going into neighborhoods, the requirements of delivering to a home and what that meant to our city routes and the requirements for our city drivers as they were encountering that type of environment. And so, I think that -- what that helps is just the customer service side, to deliver great service, but it also helps you understand your costs and the timing and that sort of thing, which as we've seen this big increase, that's helpful to us. And I think David mentioned this earlier, there have been some advantages which some of these we hope would continue, and that is just the comfort level to extend appointment windows by some of the shippers that are shipping goods to the home. And we've seen that because of the pandemic, the desire to have in-house delivery of these things is not as high as it was. And so, we've done more curbside or threshold type deliveries, which is better for productivity for us. And then the lesser amount of traffic has also helped some of these things. So, if -- I know some of those are not going to continue, but we're hopeful that our shipper customers that were experiencing see some of the benefits of this too, and would continue, which I think would allow us to do more and do it more effectively.