Amazon plans to build a local delivery network in 23 states by recruiting thousands of small US businesses, from bodegas to florists, to deliver its packages
Amazon aims to recruit 2,500 local businesses to deliver its packages in the U.S. by end of year. My latest @axios https://www.axios.com/... $AMZN
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the next step in a buildout Amazon has been running for years: back in 2018 it began enlisting entrepreneurs and small business owners to start their own delivery networks, and by 2020 it was planning 1,000-plus small delivery hubs in cities and suburbs to speed up deliveries. What changes now is the node type — instead of purpose-built depots or startup fleets, the network recruits existing storefronts, from bodegas to florists, turning Main Street retail into last-mile capacity across 23 states.
First-order effects
- About 2,500 small businesses take on package delivery as a second revenue stream alongside their core trade, giving Amazon dense local coverage in 23 states without leasing or staffing new facilities of its own.
Second-order effects
- A storefront-based fleet gives Amazon the density to keep shrinking delivery windows — the same logic behind its later push into three-hour and one-hour deliveries across roughly 2,000 US cities and towns — while chipping away at volume that would otherwise ride with USPS, whose role Amazon's rural delivery hub plan explicitly aims to reduce.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, last-mile logistics in the US keeps migrating away from national carriers and postal networks toward Amazon-controlled webs of small independent contractors — with neighborhood shops functioning as logistics infrastructure, and Amazon setting the terms of that relationship.
The trend: Amazon is steadily converting its last mile from rented carrier capacity into a proprietary, distributed network of small-business contractors, one recruitment wave at a time.