What If Amazon Delivered Everything You Order From Anywhere?

This holiday season, Amazon will cheerily assert its dominance on doorsteps across the country. There will be the stacks of Amazon boxes, of course, delivered in many cases by workers wearing Amazon uniforms and driving Amazon-branded vehicles. But there will also be the small mysteries: packages delivered by Amazon, but ordered from somewhere else.

In terms of packages delivered, Amazon is now the largest private carrier in the United States — only the post office moves more parcels. In 2020, Amazon eclipsed FedEx. In 2022, according to data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, it surpassed UPS and is “on track to widen the gap this year.” Most of this volume is products sold through Amazon. For years, though, the company hinted that it had ambitions to compete more directly with other delivery companies, and it has tested delivery services beyond its ecosystem — that is, stores that don’t primarily sell through Amazon. With more than 200,000 delivery people running routes between its customers, the thinking goes, it might as well.

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