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Challenging UPS and FedEx, Amazon Opens Its Shipping Network to All Businesses (geekwire.com) 81

Posted by EditorDavid from the boxes-with-smiles dept.
This week Amazon opened up its parcel shipping, fulfillment, and distribution "to businesses of all types and sizes." Any business can now ship, store, and deliver "using the same supply chain that supports Amazon," according to Monday's announcement of "Amazon Supply Chain Services."

The move sent shares of UPS and FedEx "tumbling" Monday writes GeekWire. And though both stocks bounced back as the week went on, GeekWire sees this as the latest example of Amazon "turning its internal capabilities into products and services for sale..."

"Amazon had already surpassed both carriers to become the nation's largest parcel shipper by volume, according to parcel-analytics firm ShipMatrix." Initial customers include Procter & Gamble, which is using Amazon's freight network to transport raw materials; 3M, which is using it to move products to distribution centers; Lands' End, which is fulfilling orders across sales channels from Amazon's warehouses; and American Eagle Outfitters, which is using Amazon's parcel service for last-mile delivery. The service can fulfill orders placed through platforms that compete with Amazon's own marketplace, including Walmart, Shopify, TikTok, and others... Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, compared the launch to the origins of Amazon's cloud business...

In addition to putting Amazon in competition with existing players in the logistics industry, the move also raises questions about data privacy. Amazon has faced accusations of using nonpublic seller data to compete against merchants on its marketplace, which it has denied. Larsen told the Wall Street Journal that the company prohibits using supply chain customer data for its own marketplace decisions, noting that hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers already trust the company to fulfill orders placed on rival platforms.
The article notes that in his annual shareholder letter Amazon's CEO "said the company is also exploring selling its custom AI chips and robotics to outside customers."

Challenging UPS and FedEx, Amazon Opens Its Shipping Network to All Businesses More | Reply

Challenging UPS and FedEx, Amazon Opens Its Shipping Network to All Businesses

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  • Great (Score:4, Funny)

    by bistromath007 ( 1253428 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @03:56PM (#66137030)

    Can we please nationalize them now, so we have a post office again?

    • We are going in the other direction,

    • Can we please nationalize them now, so we have a post office again?

      USPS had one monopoly, first class letters, delivered across the entire US for the same price, 6 days a week, which supported their existence. I do not know when the last time you received a 1st class letter, but it is now rarity for me (maybe two per month, and one of them has a historical mandate for physical letters that no longer really makes sense), and I suspect most have a similar 1st class letter experience. Delivering such 1st class letters once/twice a week, and packages only on demand, is the o

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Says the fellow who doesn't live in rural area with few roads and wonky internet. Your "solution" only works for high density metropolises....unless you have no problem charging rural people $30/letter. You must be a Republican, no sense of the common good, everybody for themselves, lusting after a dog-eat-dog world where we are all armed to the teeth.

        • I wish usps would charge $30 a letter to my home. Every day I have to walk to the mailbox, collect trash, throw it away. Maybe once a year i receive real mail.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      I like the joke, but it would be funnier to try to fix the dead tree snail mail system with such craziness as an alias database for mapping convenient email addresses.

      Another crazy innovation would be to default to no bulk-class mail, but with a new opt-in option to accept it ONLY if the recipient gets a cut of the postage paid.

      But I just read another book on why that trick would never work, so...

  • Logical step (Score:3)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @04:06PM (#66137044)
    I wondered how long. it would take before they did this. Businesses are good to start with because tehy are used to shipping via a carrier, Amazon is just one more carrier to see how much they can save with them vs UPS/FedEX/USPS. Home is harder because the last miles is variable; so you can't set fixed pickup routes and handling pickups takes longer tahn delivering and also need sorting so adding it to the drop-offs would be a challenge. However, a partnership with USPS to handle last mile and Amazon ships makes sense, FedEx and UPS already handle mail so it's not some new idea; Amazon could bid for the contract, and winning deprives competitors of lower margin freight that can be used to cube or weight out a plane. Amazon, meanwhile, gets volume for deadheading planes and trucks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Amazon is like a lot of companies....leeches. They've created nothing new, just looked around an found markets they could cannibalize.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        They've created nothing new, just looked around an found markets they could cannibalize.

        Ah, they've added competition. Terrible.

      • Being able to have a wide variety of items delivered, overnight, that I would previously had to visit more than one local store to find in stock isn't 'new' to you?

        You're excused for apparently being too young to remember pre-Amazon. Amazon was and is a new thing. Your disdain for all things corporate might be showing...

  • and NOW DSP will take on more load for not much more pay.

  • thank god (Score:3)

    by Mass Overkiller ( 1999306 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @04:18PM (#66137064)
    USPS, Fedex and UPS have been awful lately. Over the past year or so their service has been awful. I never called Fedex local office ever until this year. USPS i had to call the local office three times in the last year. I have never considered that before.
  • They already have the warehousing and delivery network. Also with rising shipping costs post-Covid, there probably is a lower cost market that Amazon can easily capture without much retooling.

  • Itâ(TM)s about the unions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locketine ( 1101453 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @04:40PM (#66137092) Homepage

    UPS has one of the strongest unions in the country and the highest paid employees for a logistic company. Heck, theyâ(TM)re some of the highest paid blue-collar employees.

    FedEx also has a great union.

    Meanwhile, Amazon is a union busting, worker micromanaging company that pays their workers extremely poorly and has an incredibly high turnover rate.

    So theyâ(TM)ll be able to beat the competition on pricing. But is it worth it?

    • they're some of the highest paid blue-collar employees.

      Have you used the services of a mechanic or a plumber in the last 10 years? They charge me, per hour, as much as my attorney. And I'll bet they're not carrying half-a-million in college debt from Columbia Law.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "They charge me, per hour, as much as my attorney."

        What a super relatable comment. But unsurprising.

        "And I'll bet they're not carrying half-a-million in college debt from Columbia Law."

        I'll bet your "attorney" isn't either. How can such a narcissist hire an attorney that hasn't paid off his school debt yet? Can't afford any more than plumber's pay?

        • I bet your attorney is a member of the state bar. And enjoys the privilege of limited competition by denying to those who did not play the game access to practice law, and in some instances, even represent themselves at law.

          Your mechanic, however, completes in a market where there is no barrier to entry other than tools, equipment, facilities, access to vital information (at a price), and knowledge/skills/abilities. Training is not essential, however desirable and helpful it must be.

          Your attorney is part of

    • uh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Fedex is not fucking unionized. The pilots are unionized and so is the FedEx Freight hub at Stockton. That's about it. The FedEx Ground drivers weren't even considered employees (and might not be nationally, idk) until about a decade ago. FedEx Ground (formerly Airborne Express) is cheaper than UPS because its wages are cheaper which is why volumewise it has completely come to dominate the package market. Drive cross country and you'll see 10 FedEx trucks for every UPS truck and it used to be the other way

    • Except that's false since FedEx aren't unionised so clearly there's no correlation between your claim and what is going on. That's not to excuse Amazon's union busting, and it's a shame that in a 3rd world country like the USA this still is allowed to happen.

      The USA so desperately needs unions (most other western nations don't because the government works for the people rather than fucking them over).

  • It's because (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @04:49PM (#66137098)

    They want FedEx and UPS gone, once they do then they can take over the whole supply chain. And the government will let them. They will undercut UPS and FedEx, and use anti competitive practices.

  • Just remember (Score:3)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @05:16PM (#66137130)
    Fedex, UPS, DHL, Ontrac employees barely gives a shit about your packages because they work directly for the company paid to deliver them. Amazon, like Uber Eats, Grub Hub, Door Dash all hire 3rd party as part of its gig economy model and doesnt give a shit about anything their contractors do.

  • Tumbling! (Score:3)

    by NobleNobbler ( 9626406 ) on Sunday May 10, 2026 @05:55PM (#66137182)

    Fedex up 1 pt in afterhours trading, UPS holding even

  • This is about getting wholesalers to pay them to take the data about where they source their stuff and who they sell it to at what rates so Amazon can replace their step in the chain as well.

  • I placed two separate orders with Lego on May 1st. The first arrived on the 3rd, the second a day or two later. I didn't realize Amazon was handling the delivery until the second one. Then I went back and looked at the tracking. Unlike FedEx and UPS they don't attach the shipments to your address so you don't get notifications if you have the app installed. But when I followed the tracking link at Lego.com it went to Amazon.
    I'm surprised it took them this long to get in on this. It makes a lot of sense, the

  • I'm surprised they didn't buy FedEx or UPS to expand logistics capacity rather than building it all themselves from scratch. This is another revenue source that resells what they're already doing similar to AWS.
  • "A product and service for every need from one and only one private equity conglomerate corporation. Trust OCP."
    and
    "OCP: What Don't We Do?"
  • "Amazon had already surpassed both carriers to become the nation's largest parcel shipper by volume..." Not correctly written. The author is comparing apple and oranges there. A carrier transports items while a shipper hires a carrier to transport items.

  • The more competition in that space the better.

    (And no, those wascally wepubwicans aren't at fault for my latest USPS package taking a leisurely loop-de-loop path through the country - if it ever even gets here, and doesn't join a back of the truck sale in Chicago. As with public schools, the problem isn't with any lack of dollars being thrown at it ... )

  • I was happy with local delivery services but damn COVID changed that. Is there still any (global) company that will require a code/pin, protecting the package from being handled to random person that happens to be close enough to target address?

  • UPS, FedEx, and USPS still have better tracking. And all three have Vacation hold, which Amazon still does not. Enough said for me.

  • Did you played "ding-ding-ditch" as a kid? Want to relive that experience? Join UPS today!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jjbenz ( 581536 )
      Sadly none of the carriers ever ring my doorbell. Luckily porch pirates are pretty rare where I live.
  • You think it will all be carried by the nice shiny Amazon vans that you see in major cities? I live in a rural area, actually on the top of a mountain in a national forest. The only time I see an Amazon delivery van is when I drive to El Paso or another sizable city. Here, it's all sent out and delivered by local contractors. So I'm standing in my kitchen and see a strangers car pull into my driveway and left thinking 'whodafuk is that?' and then they drive away and I have to go on a package hunt becaus

  • Amazon has the volume, but it is hands down the worst service I have experienced.

    For the record, I have Prime so I'm supposedly paying for 2-day delivery. I also use a UPS Store box for all deliveries. As such, I don't have to worry about porch pirates or dropping off at the wrong house. I've also clearly recorded what the store hours are so that Amazon knows the store's schedule (generally 9a-8p hours on weekdays, and short hours on Sunday).

    - They have tried delivering stuff at 10pm on a weekday
    - They have

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