UPS and FedEx could soon be beat at their own game by Amazon (opens in new tab) as the ecommerce (opens in new tab) giant is set to become the largest package delivery service in the US next year.
As reported (opens in new tab) by CNBC, the company's CEO of its worldwide consumer business Dave Clark spoke with the news outlet in an interview on Squawk Box in which he revealed that Amazon is poised to overtake its longstanding rivals in the shipping business, saying:
“We expect we will be one of the largest carriers in the world by the end of this year. I think we’ll probably be the largest package delivery carrier in the U.S. by the time we get to the end of the year, if not in early ’22.”
This means that we'll likely see even more Amazon delivery trucks on the road during next year's Black Friday (opens in new tab), Cyber Monday (opens in new tab) and Amazon Prime Day (opens in new tab) events.
Becoming a delivery service
While Amazon originally relied on third-party delivery services to ship its products out to consumers, the company began building up its logistics and fulfillment operations following a holiday fiasco back in 2013.
According to a separate report (opens in new tab) from CNBC, the company now has 400k delivery drivers (opens in new tab), 40k semi-trucks, 30k vans and a fleet of over 70 planes (opens in new tab) worldwide to ensure its customers get their packages on time. Additionally, Amazon has built warehouses and air hubs across the US to speed up the delivery time of its packages.
As the company has faced difficulties due to the pandemic, global supply chain issues and labor shortages, it has begun shipping goods to new ports to avoid blockages like the ones we're currently seeing in both LA and Long Beach, California. Although other retailers have had a tough go of things during the pandemic, Clark explained to CNBC that Amazon was well prepared to weather the storm, saying:
“These things don’t happen overnight. We’ve been building the logistics infrastructure, the technology platform that drives it, for two decades now, so we walked into the pandemic in a really good place.”
With Amazon set to become the largest delivery service (opens in new tab) in the US next year, the company could eventually even begin allowing consumers to ship products to others using its existing infrastructure.
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Via CNBC (opens in new tab)
