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ITF Group  Retail Reality Check

The Retail Reality Check: What's Actually Driving Returns, Cost, and Risk for Q4

New research on why retail's biggest freight problems get diagnosed in the wrong department, and what to do about it before peak season.

See Where Retail's Problems Actually Start

Screenshot 2026-09-29 at 11.19.19 AM

Inside the report:

  • Why $849.9 billion in retail returns is mostly a freight execution problem, not a customer service one
  • Why the cheapest carrier bid is usually a risk transfer, not a savings
  • Why the shippers who fix carrier relationships before peak season outperform the ones who wait

 

98%

on-time track record

More than
65K

vetted carriers

Roughly
90%

drop in fraud-related incidents since ITF rolled out its current controls

About
0.004%

in-transit damage rate

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“A question every shipper should ask themselves is how many companies measure transportation success only by on-time delivery, and never measure how transportation affects return rates.”
Sam Burkhan, CEO, ITF Group