Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon is in the early stages of testing out its own delivery service.
Dubbed “Ship With Amazon,” the plan would dispatch Amazon couriers to pick up products from third-party sellers and bring them to the company’s fulfillment centers, bypassing middlemen like UPS and FedEx.
The missing link
Amazon controls nearly its entire sales process, save for logistics, which the e-commerce titan spent nearly $20B on last year.
The initial phase of “Ship With Amazon,” expected to launch in Los Angeles later this year, will focus solely on deliveries between sellers and Amazon’s warehouses — but it could eventually be applied to Amazon’s entire delivery process.
Shipping on my mind
Amazon’s been pushing toward having more control over its logistics for a while now: they’ve purchased stakes in at least 2 shipping companies (Yodel, Colis Prive), have a fleet of nearly 6k shipping trailers, and own an air freight subsidiary with 32 planes.
In 2017, they threw down $1.4B toward the development of an air freight hub that will soon support 100 planes and 2.7k employees.
Though “Ship With Amazon” is still in its infant stages, it provides a glimpse into the company’s long-term goal of complete self-reliance — or, as some would call it, world domination in the e-commerce space.