Amazon rolls out deferred shipping service

Amazon Shipping available in 15 major markets

Amazon's posts strong third-quarter results (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has rolled out its stand-alone shipping service, Amazon Shipping, to 15 major markets.

The service, launched Wednesday, will initially target large shippers that use Amazon’s services but also sell and fulfill through their own channels. Under the service, the company will provide pickups at warehouses and handle the shipments to final delivery.

Ground deliveries will be made in two to five days. This underscores the deferred-delivery nature of the service. Support will be available 24/7, Amazon said. It did not list the markets in announcing the launch.

FreightWaves first reported Amazon’s announcement of the service on Aug. 15.

With rare exceptions, Amazon provides deliveries to merchants tha order from its marketplace and use the company’s Fulfillment by Amazon fulfillment and delivery services. The company has long considered getting into the stand-alone shipping business, which would put it in direct competition with other parcel-delivery carriers. But it has never pulled the trigger.

Amazon planned to roll out such a service in February 2020. However, the subsequent surge in pandemic-related delivery demand forced the company to table the idea in order to manage the tsunami of business that headed its way once e-commerce demand took off.

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Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.