[jeffmould]

Why scrape when, at least in the US, all the major players (USPS, UPS, FedEx) have free API that you can use to query tracking information?

[cVwEq]

Two (weak) reasons I can think of: 1. If doing a low-volume of tracking requests, it could be an easier implementation instead of learning the ins and outs of an API. 2. No carrier approval required for web scraping, unlike the APIs.