The Last Mile Lens with Jason Steele, Senior Director of Business Development at UniUni

As last-mile delivery becomes a defining part of the customer experience, retail and e-commerce brands are rethinking what they need from their carrier partners. Speed and price still matter, but long-term success depends on far more than a competitive rate card. 

At UniUni, we work closely with fast-growing brands navigating these decisions every day. To share a clearer framework for evaluating last-mile partners, we sat down with Jason Steele, Senior Director of Business Development, USA at UniUni.  

In this interview, Jason offers a practical perspective on what truly separates strong carrier partnerships from transactional relationships, and how brands can choose partners that protect both their operations and their brand at the doorstep. 

What predicts the success of a last-mile partnership? 

Successful partnerships come down to the alignment between companies. Too often, we see conversations in our industry centering on price, with much less time invested in evaluating service levels, communication between companies, escalation paths and responsiveness, brand requirements, and carrier responsibilities, which are factors that really shouldn’t take a back seat.  

The consequences of overlooking these elements surface down the road. Failure occurs when brands and shippers uncover misalignment with their goals, often after they’ve been partnered for some time and realize they didn’t do their due diligence. Evaluating these operational and service elements alongside pricing gives a much clearer picture of whether a partnership is set up for long-term success, or whether it’s likely to result in buyer’s (or partner’s) remorse. 

How should brands balance cost pressures with service quality in their last mile?  

The theme again is everyone gravitating toward the rate card. It’s a shiny object that partners wave, saying: “You have to beat this,” “You have to match that,” “Here’s what mine looks like.”  

But the cost per package is considerably more important. It’s difficult to see on a rate sheet.  

Really inexpensive rates often trigger WISMO calls, frustrating refund experiences, and reships,  all of which can lead to additional labor, shipping costs, customer service effort, and frustrated customers. You know, costs not showing up neatly in a rate cell for a particular wait-in zone. I believe brands should evaluate cost holistically by pairing rates with downstream operational impact. 

Let’s shift gears to technology. How should e-commerce brands evaluate a carrier’s tech stack; not just what tools exist, but how effectively they’re being used? 

Retail leaders should take a deeper look into how a carrier’s technology enables improvement, reduces manual work, provides better visibility, and supports faster recovery when things go wrong. It’s easy to look at a dashboard and say, “That looks great,” but what does the information actually mean? Leaders need to target the real-time decision-making and dig into what happens when an issue is created. That means not evaluating the happy path, but how exceptions are handled, because that’s ultimately what matters the most.  

A lot of carriers will position themselves saying nothing ever goes wrong. But when you’re evaluating a partner, it’s far more valuable to understand scenarios where things weren’t perfect and how the carrier escalated, reacted, and learned from an issue. Transparency with problems and their resolution is far more meaningful than a promise that nothing will ever break. 

How important is carrier flexibility during peak seasons, promotions, and disruptions?  

We have reached a point where any day can be peak. We should all be preparing with this reality in mind. That means carrier responsiveness and availability can no longer be limited to an 8-to-5 window. We’re in a global selling environment with multiple locations and constant demand. The carriers that prepare are the ones that can truly support e-commerce brands. 

How can brands assess if a carrier will protect (or enhance) their brand at the doorstep? 

Brands are increasingly recognizing that the shipping process is the final and most powerful opportunity to strengthen their relationship with the consumer. What makes this even more crucial is the fact that while carriers deliver the packages, brands often absorb customer frustrations when something goes wrong.  

The doorstep is really the final frontier of the brand experience.  

If I were a retail leader, I would look at driver standards, you know the quality and accuracy of proof of delivery. This means really understanding a carrier’s escalation path for exceptions and how that customer communication is handled in collaboration with the brand. 

Rather than treating shipping as a transaction from point A to point B, it should be viewed as a chance for brands to shine. When seen as an opportunity to build loyalty, deliveries become a moment to enhance a brand, impress customers, and make them a customer for life. 

What risks do brands take by relying on a single last-mile carrier. And how should they think about diversification? 

Carrier diversification is absolutely essential to the livelihood of e-commerce brands. We’ve seen in recent years just how dramatically disruptions, like bankruptcies, labor strikes, capacity cuts, price shifts, and weather events, can impact operations and financial performance. And we’ve seen many brands scramble because they didn’t have a backup plan.  

Brands need a portfolio of carriers. But more than that, they need a solid understanding of each carrier’s strengths and have the ability to ramp partners up or down as conditions change.  

In today’s environment, that makes evaluating carriers an ongoing responsibility, not a one-time exercise. The good news is that modern technology now makes it possible to activate and shift between carriers much more quickly. So, the real question is no longer whether a brand can diversify, it’s whether they’re investing the time and effort to actually do it.  

Stay tuned for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of e-commerce, technology, logistics, and supply chain. To learn more about UniUni’s last-mile delivery solutions, contact us at hello@uniuni.com.