The rapid rise in online shopping has been a boon for shipping demand, but UPS has struggled to bring down the extra costs of making more smaller deliveries to households, compared to businesses that on average receive more parcels at once. The investments show UPS is betting that if it can handle more volume it can increase the number of packages it delivers to households, and eventually improve margins and profitability, versus pushing for higher prices and less volume, said Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. “If they can’t get the delivery density – to date we haven’t seen a yearly improvement in density – that’s going to be a big problem,” Atkins said.