In this special update, co-hosts Nick Agnetti and Jason Rowland with guest Mike Lorentzen, Senior Director Enterprise Sales at Asendia USA, break down the ongoing Canada Post labor disruptions. While a phased reopening is currently underway, delivery backlogs and rolling strikes in certain areas continue to affect shipments. The panel discusses the uncertainty around potential future strikes and alternative shipping solutions to help businesses bypass delays. Listeners will gain practical insights on navigating shipping disruptions, mitigating duties and taxes, and keeping cross-border e-commerce on track despite labor and operational challenges.

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Mike Lorentzen | LinkedIn

Mike Lorentzen, CSCP, serves as Senior Director of Enterprise Sales at Asendia USA, where he leads strategic initiatives to advance the company’s positioning in the global e-commerce logistics sector. Over the course of his career, Mike has established himself as a results-driven sales and business development executive with deep expertise in cross-border commerce. He combines his logistical insight and enterprise sales acumen to help brands scale internationally, optimizing their operations to better serve customers across borders.

At Asendia USA, Mike is charged with guiding enterprise-level accounts through complex international shipping challenges, aligning logistics capabilities with revenue goals, and building long-term partnerships grounded in trust and performance. His expertise ensures that customer experience remains competitive and forward-looking. Mike is also active in thought leadership within the global e-commerce space, publishing insights on how trends like country-of-origin disclosure impact profitability and emerging markets affect cross-border growth.

With a certification in Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) and a demonstrated track record of aligning commercial objectives with operational rigor, Mike continues to drive Asendia’s growth across North American markets and support brands navigating the complexities of international logistics.

You know, the great thing about our direct access product is if your product is valued under 40 Canadian, which is roughly around $29 USD, it could still go on that network and it wouldn't get hit for any duties and taxes, any GST or PST.

This is Outside the Box with Asendia USA, a podcast educating US based brands, marketplaces and e tailers on international shipping topics and how they can expand their global e commerce footprint.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Outside the Box with Asendia USA podcast here for a special Canada edition episode with my co host Jason Rowland.

Hey everybody, welcome back.

And we have a very special guest today, Mike Lorenzen, Senior Director of Enterprise Sales for Asendia. Mike, you want to say hi?

Hey everyone.

So we're here today to talk.

It's not going to be a very long episode, but hopefully it's going to be a very effective episode in terms of just equipping you guys with some information as to what's been going on in Canada, specifically surrounding the Canada Post Strike CUPW activity.

But just to talk a little bit about the impact in the market, you know, timeline of the year, right where we're in Q4, we're gearing up for a busy fourth quarter and peak holiday shipping season, what that impact may look like in terms of delays, backlogs, etc.

And then also talk about what we're doing to help clients and how we're helping clients by utilizing our own Canadian delivery network, our apex, like Canada Direct Access Network. So Mike, would you mind sharing just a little bit of background about yourself and, you know, what you've been doing and everything else?

Yeah, so, so I'm, I'm on one of our enterprise teams here at Asendia, so working with some of, you know, the Fortune 500, Fortune thousand companies across, you know, a vast amount of different retailers and whatnot, working with, you know, clients to help mitigate issues in Canada and generally rest of the world too as well. But Canada is such a big focus for the US market and you know, it's our number one, you know, destination when it comes to E commerce.

So, you know, looking to help out customers, see if we can help kind of alleviate some of their pressures instead of using Canadian posts and kind of give them more options.

We're going to focus today on Canada, obviously, you know, how we can try and get ahead of some potential customer experience issues going into the next couple months. So on Thursday, September 25, Ottawa announced sweeping changes to the Crown Corp's operations to address its deeply troubled financial situation.

So as far as I understand, they're being primarily subsidized by the taxpayers and have had to kind of dig into that even further than they really wanted to to be able to stay afloat and stay operational. Those changes include ending daily mail delivery, closing some rural post offices and moving almost all Canadian households to community mailboxes.

Now this was a Canada Post announced this sweeping change immediately. Almost immediately.

So they've been in a full work stoppage since Friday, September 26th.

Meaning no mail, no parcels are moving outside of, I believe benefit or Social Security, what we would call here in the United States, Social Security. But checks for those qualified people, I believe those are still being delivered.

I think the positive is that it is October 13th as opposed to being, you know, this taking place on, let's say like a November 20th. Right. Because then you're going to be hitting into those significant Black Friday Cyber Monday volumes and everything else related to holiday surges.

And then according to the most recent news updates, there is still a very significant gap between Canada Post and the CUPW in terms of where they could possibly meet in the middle or come to a mutually agreeable contract or situation. I'd love to get your guys thoughts what you're seeing in the market, Jason, from your perspective from risk compliance, et cetera.

And then Mike, more on the sales front.

Yeah, I think overall Cynthia has had to enact kind of a muscle memory thing here. Right. Because earlier in the year we had, or late last year we had the original counter strike.

So basically at this point when we got notification of the second strike coming, we took the steps to kind of prepare for exactly what we knew was going to happen and what we could do to avoid our customers having issues with the strike and got all that stuff in place.

So that on the day that everything went into effect, we were kind of able to just be nimble and keep things moving and, and offer our customers a solution into Canada that keeps things moving.

So that, you know, for our plus products is a pretty simple, you know, switch from with our broadreach partners up in Canada to keep those things moving by going around Canada Post and they kind of have averted that entire strike by just using a different vendor network to get those things delivered. So there are some things that we still, you know, unfortunately it's not a complete solution because if things are being sent into P.O.

boxes into Canada there's, there's, you know, still there's no way to get those things out of the Canada Post but for the most part if they are not addressed appeal boxes then we have a solution that gets those things delivered in regardless of of how long this strike goes on or how, how many of these strikes they end up being we're able to to provide a product I think that keeps things moving to a level where especially as we get closer and inch closer to a holiday season and a peak season here our comfortable, our customers who utilize that that new service can feel comfortable that their material at least is going to keep moving.

In the meantime they will need to find a solution that keeps those people employed and keeps mail moving even if it is at a, at a restricted level for community mailboxes or whatever they end up doing. So in the end it is going to be an effect that the Canadian citizens have to deal with.

From a compliance standpoint there's really not much that changes. There's no additional burden on customers that choose to switch to this new model.

The customs clearance is still done through our broad reach partners and their vendors who handle customs clearance. And no, it's been. It's a very easy thing for customers to switch over to. There's no, there's no big burden on them to to do so.

You know, if, if as you know as Mike continues to to deal with the customer side of things, he'll have a lot more to talk about how it affects customers individually. But for the most part I think the product is on its feet and it's stable and it works.

Peak season shipping to Canada can be challenging with the Canada Post strike disrupting cross border shipping. e-PAQ Select provides multiple entry points, volume-based rates and fast cost-effective delivery to most Canadian residential addresses.

Avoid delays and contact us today.

So for again for listeners and viewers watching, listening etc. EPAC plus is an Asendia service routing. So that is a, that is a branded name within our services that we utilize.

We use EPAC Plus EPAC select which you'll hear of EPAC Select Canada Direct Access.

EPAC plus is our under 2 kilogram or under 4.4 pound tracked product for four parcels being sent to several countries throughout the world, including Canada. It is DDU or Duties Unpaid delivered Duty Unpaid product.

So it would be a partner, you know, USPS process, Canada Post handoff and Canada Post delivery. That's why Jason mentioned EPAC plus in terms of what to do if you're using EPAC plus.

So I think, Mike, you might be planning on talking a little bit more about that or some of the de minimis stuff is as well. So go ahead. I just wanted to get clarification on that.

Yeah, no thanks, Nick.

So, so right now, from a, from a DDU standpoint, you know, the great thing about our direct access product is if your product is valued under 40 Canadian, which is roughly around $29 USD, it could still go on that network and it wouldn't get hit for any duties and taxes, any GST or pst, which is a good thing.

So you get the speed of the broadreach network for a DDU parcel and won't have to worry about, you know, trying to collect duties and taxes up front and everything along those lines. And then going back to the customer's point of view.

I think customers are now starting to prepare themselves that this is going to be elongated thing.

I would, I personally think in my recommendation is that this will go to the end of Q4 and might dip into Q1 like it did last year and we still will see, you know, people trying to go ddu.

I think the smart thing to do is start processing through DDP and giving those costs and finding solutions, whether it's a duties, taxes, calculator upfront or, or some of the other solutions out there where you can kind of preset those fees and you can collect them up front. The experience is so much better than a postal product. It's a lot faster. Our clearance process is probably second to none.

We get most of our stuff cleared before it even hits the border. And then once it's over, you know, we have some other things that we do too as well to mitigate kind of risks and hold ups with some of the parcels.

We're more than willing to help.

You know, right now we're onboarding new customers every day and you know, hopefully, you know, with this, this, this kind of just helps bring us more business too as well.

You know, one thing we've been talking about, it's been probably a year and a half now is the fact that we, we need to focus and the industry is continuing to shift and focus more and more on customer experience. And this is this is a situation that is paramount for customer experience. Right.

The reality is there's still, what, 20 calendar days there where, you know, there was no mail or parcels being processed.

So everything's either being staged, being held, and then they have to get through that backlog in order to actually move forward on, you know, with the DDU side. Mike, do you want to touch on the rotating strikes real quick?

Yeah, so. So right now, it was just announced the other day, I believe it was over the weekend, that they're going to go into, like a rotating strike.

So they'll be working, but like Nick was kind of mentioning, there's still going to be a backlog from previous, you know, items that have been held and I'm sure, too, as well, competitors.

And even including ourselves, we've had to hold different parcels, you know, in different areas once we started processing those and then handing those over to the Canadian postal networks. It's going to be challenging.

And you're definitely going to see a large increase in transits where, you know, you could see, you know, additional week or two or more where these parcels are still attempting to be delivered.

I don't think it's going to be as bad as it was last year around this time when they were totally shut off and, you know, there was nothing to do with those parcels. And, you know, they were still climbing through that, even through the month of February. February.

But I still recommend that, obviously, if you're trying to ship to Canada, whether or not it's ddp, ddu, you know, we have options for you too, as well. Like I said, for the DDU option, if you're under 40 Canadian, it can go through our network.

And then obviously, if you're ddp, we'd love to take your parcel and we'd love to deliver it, you know, within three to five business days. You know, we're also delivering on Saturdays and Sundays as well.

So, you know, we can touch all the corners of Canada and we are delivering all over the place. I think the challenge still will be the P.O.

boxes like Jason had mentioned, but that's across the board and we're all, all of our competitors are going to face that same adversity there.

Yeah, absolutely. And Jason, you made a good mention of it, too, and something that we did, or you mentioned, the Broadreach team.

I just, I. I simply say our Canadian team, right, they did a great job of getting ahead of this and adding on an alternative final mile vendor to really help offset what we were handing off to Canada Post to keep those things Going right.

So some of those really extended rural areas to the far reach places and such as well as, you know, even things that would be handled locally that was best routed by Canada Post previously are now going with a final mile vendor that's alternative to Canada Post that's still handling it. You know, when we talk about de minimis rules for Canada, it is pretty simple, but I think it's important we just go over it again.

So Mike had mentioned 40 Canadian. So anything, any transactional value. So sale value of a good under 40 Canadian is, there's no duty or tax owed on that going into Canada.

If it's a, you know, if it's going in for a full, full clearance into Canada.

If it's under 150, you're going to pay the tax, the provincial tax where the product's going to be getting delivered and, and then you won't be paying duty if it's over 150 Canadian, which right now, Mike, what do you think, like 115 U.S. something like that?

Something around that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then you're going to be paying duty and tax if it's over 150 Canadian. I'd say the better move for most businesses in the direct consumer space is to make sure that packages are getting delivered and not being held.

So that's where we want to position ourselves as the resource with the network to be able to help you achieve that. And of course you can always contact through any of the outlets related to this podcast.

And Mike or Jason, do you guys have anything else you want to add on this situation?

The only other thing I would add is that obviously it's a fluid situation and any day these situations can come to an end, they can change, they could get worse or better depending on what happens that day.

But I think the important thing is that we, in terms of, like you said, our team up in Canada has learned from the first strike and learned what worked and learned what, what is, what ended up being maybe better than the old way. Right. As a result of the changes we had to make. So this is not just a, hey, there's a new strike, let's turn this thing on and off.

There are actual lessons and changes that we've made to our standard baseline on what we do because of the lessons that we've learned on what worked really well during this, during the strike. So yeah, it's a fluid situation, but at least we're in pretty good hands for now.

And just to kind of add on to that too as well, if, if tax mitigation is what you're looking for too, as well. We have, you know, different strategies and different things that we can kind of talk to you about too, as well.

If that's kind of what's stopping you from moving into a fully optimized DDP network, right?

That's huge. Okay, thanks so much for taking time out of your day, guys.

I know this was a little impromptu, and hopefully viewers and listeners, you guys were able to pull some nuggets out of this. And thank you again for watching outside the box with Asendia USA Podcast Special Canada Episode and more coming soon.

Share subscribe and download our podcast to learn more about today's topic or for a free consultation, email us at ecommerce.usa@asendia.com. Come back for more insightful discussions on e-commerce shipping to Canada, Mexico and worldwide.