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Amazon’s New Jets Are a Threat to FedEx and UPS – Flexport.

If the reports are true, Amazon is leasing Boeing 767 jets to get tighter control (and presumably better pricing) on its logistics. UPS and FedEx need to go into full-on war-time mode: Make no mistake, Jeff Bezos will one-day use this fleet of jets to launch a direct frontal assault on their core parcel delivery business. When he does, we can be sure the company focus relentlessly on becoming the low-cost provider with the best customer experience, the same combination that’s made Amazon such a powerful force in all the other markets where it plays.

Amazon already offers parcel shipping for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) customers, but only if shipment starts at one of its distribution centers. That could change. In September it told us about Amazon Flex, the plan to hire independent contractors to deliver packages. It’s already live in Seattle, Richmond, Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis, with New York, Chicago, and Portland coming soon.

For now Amazon Flex only picks up packages from its own distribution centers, but it doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to see how it could offer pickups from other businesses. Operating its own jets, Amazon could connect the networks of independent contractors in these cities to create an end-to-end express parcel delivery service.

The worst thing for the parcel integrators is that Amazon can spend years perfecting its parcel delivery network before ever feeling pressure to offer the service to the public. And just as with AWS, Amazon gets to build the parcel delivery infrastructure whether or not it ever decides to offer the service publicly.

Read more.


Huh, the article is from the CEO of Flexport who lives in this world, seems reasonable Amazon would want to AWS-ize more services.