33: The Next Mile: Inside Asendia USA's New Domestic Parcel Network
🚀 Domestic shipping is about to get a lot more flexible.
Recorded live at Parcel Forum 2026, our co-hosts Jason and Nick sit down with Doug Longobardi, Chief Revenue Officer, Asendia USA and Gerry McGowan, Executive Director US Network for Asendia to unpack "e-PAQ Select Domestic"—Asendia USA’s new multi-carrier domestic parcel solution.
What does it mean for e-commerce shippers?
📦 More carrier flexibility
đźšš Smarter middle-mile routing and zone skipping
đź’° Potential cost savings through network optimization
⏱️ A targeted 1–5 day delivery experience
🔄 A domestic solution that complements international e-commerce shipping
With pilot customers already shipping and a full launch targeted for January 1, 2027, the team is building a network designed to take the complexity out of domestic parcel delivery.
🎧 Tune in to hear what’s changing—and what it could mean for your shipping strategy.
Leave your questions or comments for the team!
Learn more about this topic:
Doug Longobardi | LinkedIn
Gerry McGowan | LinkedIn
Transcript
The benefit for the shipper is they don't have to worry about it.
Speaker A:You know, if one carrier is having a service problem, I just flip a switch and we could go right to another carrier.
Speaker A:We have at least two carriers for every delivery out there.
Speaker B:Step into the future with shipping smart.
Speaker B:Outside the box is where the journey starts.
Speaker B:From borders to buyers, we break it down fast.
Speaker B:Nick and Jason deliver knowledge that lasts.
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Speaker B:Tune in, lean in, let's unlock the way.
Speaker B:Go outside the box with the senior usa.
Speaker C:Hi everybody.
Speaker C: to you live from parcel form: Speaker C:I've got my co host Jason Roland over here.
Speaker D:Hey everybody, welcome back.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:And we've got two special guests today.
Speaker C:We've got Doug Longobarti, the Chief revenue officer Ascendia USA, as well as Jerry McGowan, the executive director, US Network for Ascendia USA.
Speaker C:Thanks for joining, guys.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker A:Glad to be here.
Speaker C:So, okay, the topic that we're going to talk about today is.
Speaker C:And, and everybody, by the way, if you're listening and, and, or if you're watching, you're going to hear a little construction noise.
Speaker C:We are at the early hours of parcel form, so there's a forklift passing us by right now as we're recording, so bear with us with that.
Speaker C:Okay, so the topic today, Ascendia USA's EPAC Select Domestic Launch, so long awaited, very excited.
Speaker C:And we've got the two experts here with us today to talk through this.
Speaker C:If you guys wouldn't mind just taking a couple minutes and going through some introductions and kind of your focuses as it relates to this topic, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I mean, Jerry McGowan, been in the business for 30 years at least, you know, a lot of years at ups and then like the last 20 years as more of a shipper between 3pls building out the hellofresh network and things like that.
Speaker A:So very accustomed to, you know, the final mile, the importance, the, you know, the need to have good service, visible service.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then using a net, a mix of network carriers to do that.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker E:Okay, great.
Speaker E:And Doug, Doug Lungarti, Chief Revenue Officer of Accendia usa.
Speaker E:My primary responsibility is to build revenue, grow revenue year over year.
Speaker E:This is a perfect way to do that with the domestic product.
Speaker E:So we're pretty excited about it.
Speaker C:Excellent.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:That's amazing.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:And you know, if we have any new viewers that aren't familiar with Nicholas and myself.
Speaker D:I'm Jason Roland.
Speaker D:I am the Director of Compliance for Ascendia USA and the regional risk and compliance officer for North America.
Speaker D:And yeah, anything that deals with our company complying with a law or a rule or a regulation comes through myself and my team to figure out.
Speaker D:So welcome back.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker C:Jason, do you want to get it started in terms of talking a little bit more about product specifics?
Speaker D:Sure, yeah.
Speaker D:So domestic product, not really a place we really dipped our toe in so far in the life of Ascendia usa.
Speaker D:So what is this product?
Speaker D:What have you built but what are its positive things?
Speaker D:And you know, kind of give the group an intro.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:It started out, the journey started out about a year and a half ago where Ascendia Worldwide knew that they needed more than just a one postal carrier consolidation option for the US So I came on board to build out a more competitive product and a diversified product so that we're shipping from the uk, the apac, you know, Europe coming in and it comes into the airports once it clears our broker and then becomes a domestic product and hits the network.
Speaker A:Well, while this is going on and talking with Doug and the leadership team here in the US are like, well, we really don't have that service to offer.
Speaker A:How can we make that work?
Speaker A:So it's, it's very similar in using the network of carriers that will build, but the US will have different challenges because they're just not coming into three pickup points at three airports.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They have customers all over the continental U.S. so we have to like pivot and use our service in different ways that can accommodate the different customer solutions.
Speaker A:You know, whether they, you know, whether we do sortation at our buildings, whether customer does sortation, whether we use two carriers instead of four.
Speaker A:So like in the US it's challenging in that way, but it's also exciting because they now have the flexibility that when they're, you know, providing great international service, they can also complement that with the domestic service.
Speaker D:Yeah, that's a great benefit to a.
Speaker A:Lot of the customers and the service itself.
Speaker A:The benefit when you get into dynamic routing multiple carrier is that the benefit for the shipper is they don't have to worry about it.
Speaker A:You know, if one carrier is having a service problem, I just flip a switch and we could go right to another carrier.
Speaker A:We have at least two carriers for every delivery out there.
Speaker A:We can launch eventually we can launch.
Speaker A:Like if a shipper wants a four day max to the US we can do if they want a Five day max they want to do.
Speaker A:So we can also customize the solution based off what their SLA needs are.
Speaker A:So that's like.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of benefits as we grow this out that we can get into.
Speaker E:That's fantastic.
Speaker A:But we really want to be to the shipper.
Speaker A:We want to be like, we don't want them to have the headache.
Speaker A:We'll take the headache.
Speaker A:We'll manage the software, manage the carriers so that they can worry about growing their revenue and we'll get it to the customer, you know, at the promised date.
Speaker A:And that's the goal.
Speaker C:That's awesome.
Speaker C:I think too, for.
Speaker C:For the listeners and viewers, it might be important.
Speaker C:You know, I know we have thousands of devoted listeners and viewers, and so it would be important to just highlight.
Speaker E:Know.
Speaker C:Historically, our focus has been on US Outbound, small parcel delivery, right?
Speaker C:So anything international, so focused on Canada, Australia, uk, Mexico, worldwide, really, you know, a significant focus in effort and energy into Canada over the last five years specifically.
Speaker C:But this is, this is new, right?
Speaker C:This is.
Speaker C:This is very new for us as an organization.
Speaker C:So, you know, outside of it, you know, I think it's important for listeners and viewers, especially those that are familiar with Ascendia, to understand, you know, why is Ascendia launching the domestic network, you know, outside of it.
Speaker C:You know, obviously people say, okay, we're going to grow revenue, but there is a value add portion of it.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C:And so.
Speaker C:So, Doug, and you know, why did we choose to.
Speaker C:To develop the domestic network and then what is going to set this product apart from others that are in the market?
Speaker E:Great question.
Speaker E:So it's a natural progression, right?
Speaker E:So we meet as a group, a strategy session on a quarterly basis.
Speaker E:This was brought up several times.
Speaker E:And we kind of said, you know what, we're not ready for it.
Speaker E:It' the timing's not good on it.
Speaker E:And then it became where it was evident when Jerry came on board, he set everything up.
Speaker E:We're already doing it right now with the uk, inbound Canada, inbound Europe, Asia.
Speaker E:The volume started coming there, and the volume was good, and you need the volume to start growing this product.
Speaker E:And we saw that all of our customers, as we're going in to pick up the international, they're saying, hey, can you help us with the domestic as well?
Speaker E:So that's where it became the natural progression.
Speaker E:So we said, you know what, Jerry?
Speaker E:Is it something we could set up?
Speaker E:Let's look at it.
Speaker E:Let's look at doing it.
Speaker E:Us to us.
Speaker E:What does that look like?
Speaker E:We were so successful setting up US to Canada.
Speaker E:And we said well why not replicate that?
Speaker E:We're right here in the US we don't have to go up to Canada to do it.
Speaker E:We've done it up in Canada.
Speaker E:We know all the players here.
Speaker E:Jerry has identified all those players.
Speaker E:So we said all right, let's hone in on all of the super urban and urban areas in the US what does that look like?
Speaker E:What do those postcodes look like?
Speaker E:And we identified about 9,800 postcodes that we fit and we knew that we could get a one to five day delivery into those postcodes.
Speaker E:And then we said well what about the outlying areas and what does that look like?
Speaker E:The outlying areas for the rurals, super rurals, the Billings, Montana.
Speaker E:How are you going to get a package delivered there?
Speaker E:We said we have the leverage, we have the relationship that we've used with the international and year over year with the usps.
Speaker E:Let's go out to the usps, let's get an NSA agreement, let's lock that in, let's give them the volumes of our projections from what volume we currently have, what additional volume we're going to win and let's negotiate something with, with the usps.
Speaker E:We took it a step further with that and what we did in Canada what made us so successful is we used our transportation, our expertise with the transportation, our logistics and and we said we have 15 plus owner operated vehicles that are team driven drivers that are all in the US and in Canada.
Speaker E:We said a lot of those vehicles are coming back empty.
Speaker E:Why not utilize those vehicles from the west coast going to the east coast, east coast going to the west coast.
Speaker E:Let these drivers meet each other.
Speaker E:Let's do some zone skipping and drop ship of all across the U.S. that we could utilize.
Speaker E:We're also utilizing 15 to 20 of our regional sort facilities around the U.S. we also are utilizing 10 plus regional carriers that are really best in class service, right that we know we can't have anybody delivered later than five or six days.
Speaker E:So our delivery commitment on this product is fully tracked one to five days and you're going to have some of the outlying areas 3% going six and seven days.
Speaker E:We're hitting that right now.
Speaker E:We're having this success.
Speaker E:We have three pilot customers that have started with us and we're pretty excited about the future.
Speaker E:So right now we're in the test pilot phase.
Speaker E: ,: Speaker E:We will have every carrier set up.
Speaker E:Jerry has assured me that we will have everything set.
Speaker C:You heard it here, people.
Speaker C:January 1st.
Speaker E:It's all on.
Speaker C:It's the books now.
Speaker C:There's no going back now, Doug.
Speaker E:No way.
Speaker E:It's out there.
Speaker E:We want to have it happen.
Speaker A:Share, subscribe and download our podcast to learn more about today's topic.
Speaker A:Or for a free consultation, email us at e commerce USA.com Come back for more insightful discussions on E Commerce shipping to Canada, Mexico and worldwide.
