When you track every Amazon package for 2.5 years... you learn juicy details. Data-obsessed company Rakuten found that the percent of Amazon packages delivered by Amazon rose from 16% in 2017 to 48% today — The US Postal Service ships 33%, UPS has 17%, and FedEx covers under 2%. All of Amazon's gains over that span were at the expense of the Postal Service (just as Trump started demanding Amazon pay more for mail).
How'd it happen so fast?... A combo of strategic under-the-radar and high-profile shipping fleets:
- Amazon Flex: Lets gig workers deliver packages in their own Honda Civic delivery coupe à la Uber/Lyft, making $18-$25/hour.
- Amazon Delivery Partners: Amazon entices local entrepreneurs to start micro-delivery companies to handle last-mile delivery of packages to stoops across their hometowns.
- Amazon Now: Those Amazon-branded vans that can deliver to a bar within an hour.
- Amazon Locker, Amazon Counter: Deliver a bunch of things to 1 spot, like a student center or a Rite Aid (that partnership was announced yesterday), letting customers carry their stuff home.
- Planes (Amazon just leased 15 at the Paris Air Show), drones (arriving "within months"), and a $1.5B air hub in Kentucky.
Let the competition give you data, then beat them with it... Amazon's relationship with a bunch of partners shifted from friends to frenemies to enemies — It partnered up at first, but eventually used partnership data to do it better itself. Amazon's done that with physical stores (Amazon Go) and even video (Amazon Original films). And according to Rakuten, Amazon-delivered packages take 3.2 days on average. Everyone else takes 6.