Research: Amazon could already offer next-day delivery to 72% of the US population, after growing its US logistics infrastructure ~3X in the past four years
Eugene Kim / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2019 research lands mid-arc: Amazon had already grown its US logistics footprint roughly 3X in four years, and by that December Morgan Stanley estimated it was delivering half its own packages at 2.5B a year, on track to pass UPS and FedEx in volume (Morgan Stanley's package-volume estimate). The 72%-next-day figure is the capability snapshot behind those numbers.
What came after validates the trajectory: the same infrastructure push later extended to one- to two-day delivery in rural areas using contracted drivers and local shops, then to three-hour and one-hour windows across ~2K cities and towns, with Prime Air drones slated for nearly 500 cities by end of 2026.
First-order effects
- UPS and FedEx face a customer-turned-competitor whose network can reach 72% of the US population next-day without them, pressuring their parcel volumes and pricing.
- Prime members in covered metros gain materially faster default delivery, raising the baseline competitors must match.
Second-order effects
- Retail rivals are forced into their own fulfillment buildouts or costly reliance on carriers whose largest shipper is also their biggest threat.
- Amazon's dense warehouse footprint creates optionality beyond parcels — the later rural program routes through mom-and-pop shops, turning last-mile infrastructure into a small-business channel.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US parcel delivery structurally splits between Amazon's captive network and the traditional carriers, with speed tiers compressing from days toward hours as the 2026 sub-day rollout shows.
- Drone delivery scaling from pilots to hundreds of cities points to a regulatory and airspace-planning regime built around routine commercial low-altitude freight rather than exceptions.
The trend: Amazon is converting four years of tripled logistics investment into a self-owned delivery network that keeps compressing delivery windows from days to hours to drones.