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Peak season isn’t a sprint, but a year-round cycle. From summer forecasting to spring returns, every quarter impacts your ability to deliver, scale, and stay competitive.

In this guide, we break down each season’s role in your operational success. From choosing the right tools and auditing workflows to managing labor, automation, safety, and reverse logistics. Whether you’re a warehouse manager, logistics director, or operations lead, this article gives you the full playbook to plan smarter and perform better when it counts most.

TL;DR: You’ll learn how to:

• Build a proactive, year-round peak season strategy
• Choose tools and partners that improve visibility and control
• Audit workflows and prevent seasonal burnout
• Optimize labor and integrate automation
• Create a returns strategy that closes the loop.

Let’s get into it.

Summer Groundwork: Forecasting and Supply Chain Readiness

Many service providers begin planning for peak season in the spring and early summer months, long before peak season happens. Many providers do this by conducting Peak Season Forecasting.

Forecasting doesn’t just reflect on your past workflows and parcel volumes; it also looks at what is to come. Carrier schedules and limits, labor force readiness, the scalability of your equipment and services, and even changes in tariffs or import duties all factor into a reliable forecast.

The window to plan is also getting tighter. Peak season starts earlier each year. In the U.S., the first wave hits in July with summer holidays and often stretches through early September during the back-to-school period. Depending on the industry, service providers may only have a few months (sometimes less) to get their plans in place.

Note on Mid-Year Retail Surges

Events like Amazon’s Prime Day, along with similar promotions from Walmart, Target, and other large players, have effectively created a new mini-peak period in mid-summer. These flash sale windows can strain fulfillment systems, increase parcel volume, and force providers to shift inventory and staffing earlier than expected. For many, July is no longer a quiet ramp-up. Building these dates into your forecasting model helps you avoid surprises and stay ahead of capacity crunches.

Picking the Right Tools for the Job

Just like how a farmer wouldn’t use a random fertilizer for their crops, operational managers need to be selective about the tools they use to prepare for peak season. The best tools will offer a holistic view across warehouse workflows such as fulfilment, transportation, and labor. This always decision-makers to adjust plans in real time based on real data. A quote from DEPOSCO’s 2025 post-peak survey highlights what can happen when tools are chosen wrong:

“While 70% of executives entered peak season confident in their fulfillment systems, only 42% achieved successful system performance when it mattered most.”

The Importance of Evaluating Every Part of Your Supply Chain

One of the most important tasks to complete during the low period before peak season is a full evaluation of your supply chain. Start by identifying weaknesses: Where are the bottlenecks occurring? Which areas of business have high error or issue rates?

Evaluate your teams as well. Which groups need more support? Are there weak links forming between departments? If one team is hitting its targets but another is falling behind, it’s critical to understand why and address it. Clear roles, defined responsibilities, and ongoing training are key to setting your team up for success.

Next, assess your Warehouse Management System (WMS) and inventory management tools. Upgrading doesn’t always mean buying new equipment, but your systems should be current, functional, and equipped to handle evolving customer demands and fluctuating volumes.

Also review your relationships with last-mile carriers. Are your current partners still the best fit? Are there others who could serve your needs more reliably? (Check out our guide on 10 questions to ask your last-mile carriers before peak season.)

Final Prep Tip: Review your existing workflows and business strategies. What’s working? What needs reworked? A pre-peak audit or a clear roadmap can help align your team with your long-term goals for efficiency, performance, and growth. Consult an expert to get started.

Fall Operations: Adapting Workflows and Prioritizing Workforce Safety

By the time Fall arrives, many service providers are already navigating early peak activity and evaluating the systems they set up over the summer. You and your team have seen what’s working and what has not. The time between surges if your time to regroup and make strategic adjustments.

Start with audits. Unlike the broad, high-level forecasting done in summer, these audits should focus on one area at a time. This makes it easier to spot bottlenecks, address inefficiencies, and implement meaningful changes between surges.

Take inventory as an example. How is it organized? How efficiently is it moving? A space utilization audit can reveal where layout or workflow changes are needed, allowing you to set realistic goals and better manage space and flow.

Gearing Up for Safety During Peak Season

Audits aren’t just for reviewing your business practices. It’s also important to evaluate the safety of your warehouses and the safety practices taught to employees. During the rush of peak season, sometimes even the best employees make mistakes that could lead to safety hazards, injuries, and issues while trying to get loads out the door. So, it’s important you review all safety practices and protocols with your team before, during, and after peak season to make sure everyone is on the same page. Bringing in a third party to do an audit can help point out potential safety hazards or outdated practices before these become issues.

The 2021 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index stated that the three most common injuries were related to slips, falls, and injuries that arise from handling inventory (overexertion). The index reported that 29.6% of non-fatal injuries in the transportation and warehousing sectors were caused by overexertion (sprains or strains due to handling objects) alone. This led to nearly $1 billion in costs for companies. Most accidents occur during transportation, according to the 2023 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Given this, it’s important to come up with an actionable plan to keep your team safe during peak periods. Here are three tips to incorporate into your company’s safety practices:

• Avoid forklift traffic – 90% of forklifts are involved in some sort of accident during their lifetime, causing an estimated 61,800 non-fatal accidents each year. Managing your forklift traffic using infrastructure such as dedicated forklift paths and man-walkways can help increase efficiency and safety at the same time.
• Checking Employee Certifications – Employees who are not certified nor trained to operate certain machinery should not operate said machinery. Certified employees who are trained increase safety and decrease the possibility for accidents in the warehouse.
• Always use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – PPE protects workers from dangerous environments and substances. Educating your team on the appropriate type of PPE to use in your workplace and when to use it can help reduce injuries and accidents in both the short term and long term.

Want more ways to keep your warehouse safe? Read the full article on improving workplace safety for logistics teams.

Winter Harvest: Analyzing Consumer Trends and Sustaining Team Momentum

From October through January, many service providers face their most intense stretch of the year. Back-to-back surges — from Cyber Monday to Christmas to New Year’s — can bring major swings in parcel volume, often from one day to the next.

In November 2023, U.S. consumers spent over $109.3 billion online leading up to Cyber Monday. On that single day alone, $12.4 billion was spent. That kind of surge can make or break a service provider’s season — and having the right tools in place makes all the difference.

Automation plays a key role. While it may sound like a leap, it’s about building a system that scales with your needs within your budget and existing workflows. Automation allows your team to respond faster, adapt to volume shifts, and stay focused under pressure.

It’s also a smart strategy for avoiding burnout both on the warehouse floor and in management. To make automation effective, you need a labor model that supports it. Start here:

• Shorten and focus warehouse shifts
• Rotate physical labor teams between stations
• Assign dedicated team members to specific operational zones
• Keep communication channels open between all departments

With the right automation tools, management gains real-time visibility into what’s happening on the ground helping them guide warehouse teams more effectively. That translates into faster workflows, fewer safety risks, and fewer interruptions.

Mapping Out the Year to Come

The number of peak events continues to rise and the downtime between them keeps shrinking. E-commerce has turned seasonal demand into a near year-round challenge. While this article focuses on overall strategy, we’ve broken down each retail peak and its impact in a separate guide. The key takeaway here? Your systems need to be built for year-round agility, not just holiday heroics. Being “peak ready” now means knowing when to scale up, how to scale down, and how to pivot fast when the unexpected hits.

Spring Renewal: Managing Returns and Preparing for the Year Ahead

For many service providers, the peak season doesn’t officially end in December. Instead, it transitions into one final surge: the Returns Season, which typically runs from January into February.

This period can present just as many challenges as outbound logistics, especially for teams that didn’t plan for it alongside their peak season strategy.

Here are three key areas to focus on:

• Inventory Management
  Avoid ending the season with excess inventory. Build scalable, flexible inventory systems that can adjust to inbound returns while maintaining order accuracy and visibility.
• Labor Shortages
  Peak season fatigue and shifting demand can create staffing gaps. Plan ahead for temporary labor needs or optimize existing teams to handle post-holiday volume.
• Reverse Logistics
  Treat reverse logistics as its own operation — not just a support function. Develop dedicated workflows and teams to process, inspect, and reintegrate returned products efficiently.

Pro Tip:
Poor returns planning can be costly — in time, money, and customer satisfaction. But with the right systems in place, the returns season can be a clean and well-managed close to your peak year.

Closing the Loop

As the returns season wraps up, it’s a valuable opportunity to reflect — not just on what went wrong, but on what went right. Use this time to evaluate performance, gather data, and reset your systems for the year ahead.

Peak season is no longer a moment — it’s a cycle. And with a well-planned strategy that spans forecasting, operations, safety, automation, and returns, service providers can thrive through every turn of the calendar.

Ready to take control of your peak season?

Whether you’re reworking your forecasting model, tightening up your warehouse processes, or building out a smarter returns plan…now’s the time to act. Use this guide as your starting point and turn seasonal chaos into year-round strategy.

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Let’s make your next peak season your most efficient one yet.