A General Rate Increase, or GRI, is the annual rate hike that major US parcel carriers — UPS, FedEx, and DHL — apply across their published rate cards. It typically lands in early January, though carriers stagger the implementation date by service.
The headline GRI percentage (often 4.9% to 6.9% in recent years) understates the real impact. The advertised increase is an average across all services. Surcharges — residential delivery, fuel, peak season, additional handling, dimensional weight thresholds, address-correction fees — usually increase by larger amounts on top of the base rate. A shipper's actual GRI impact is often 7-10% year over year, even when the headline number is 5%.
The GRI cycle is when shippers should re-evaluate their carrier mix. Carriers compete most aggressively in November and December as next-year commercial contracts are negotiated; shippers who renegotiate at GRI time often get materially better rates than the published GRI suggests.
USPS work-share rates also see annual increases, but they are typically smaller (USPS is statutorily limited in postage increases) and apply differently — USPS announces its rate changes through Postal Regulatory Commission filings and the changes are usually less aggressive than commercial carrier GRIs.
L5 monitors GRI cycles for every customer and renegotiates carrier mix automatically — that's what a named account rep does between January and December.