CarParts.com reported $1.8 million in adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2024, its highest quarterly result since Q3 2023, according to Seeking Alpha. The gain follows a deliberate shift: the company scaled its A-Premium subsidiary—a last-mile delivery network the brand owns—toward a $50 million annual run rate and 300,000-package monthly capacity. CEO David Meniane described the quarter as "the strongest evidence yet" that the vertically integrated logistics model pays.
The mechanism is simple. CarParts.com routes packages through A-Premium instead of paying UPS, FedEx, or regional couriers full retail rates. A-Premium handles final delivery in dense metro corridors where package volume justifies dedicated routes. The brand keeps the margin it would otherwise pay a third party, and because A-Premium is a subsidiary, every package contributes to consolidated revenue twice: once as a product sale, once as a logistics fee. The EBITDA improvement reflects that recaptured margin at scale.
This works because auto parts are heavy, predictable, and time-sensitive. Customers ordering brake rotors or alternators usually need them within two days, and the weight makes parcel shipping expensive. By concentrating delivery in high-volume ZIP codes, A-Premium amortizes the fixed cost of a van and driver across dozens of stops per day. The unit economics flip when density crosses roughly 15 packages per route—below that threshold, third-party carriers win on cost; above it, owned last-mile is cheaper per package.
A small physical-product brand can copy the pattern without buying vans. Start by auditing your shipment data for the past six months. Identify the top five ZIP codes by package count. If you ship more than 40 packages per week into a single metro area, you have enough density to negotiate a dedicated route with a regional courier or a gig-economy driver on a flat weekly rate. Offer a local courier service $400 per week to handle all deliveries in that zone on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At 50 packages, your per-package cost drops to $8—often half the retail parcel rate for a 20-pound box.
Test it for 90 days. Track on-time delivery, damage rate, and customer satisfaction against your baseline carrier. If performance holds, expand to the next metro cluster. You are not building A-Premium's 300,000-package network; you are reclaiming $4 to $12 per package in margin on your densest routes, which compounds quickly when you ship thousands of units per quarter. The steel is the same: own the last mile where volume justifies it, and let the big carriers handle the long tail.
CarParts.com's result shows that logistics is not just a cost line—it is a profit center when you control it. The next move for any physical-product brand is a density map and a carrier negotiation.