Amazon as a delivery behemoth (continu’d)
Growing capabilities in ocean, more vans & aircrafts
In 2016, Amazon registered itself with a federal agency overseeing ocean transportation, a step towards allowing it to serve as an intermediary for suppliers shipping merchandise in or out of the U.S.
Several month later, it was reported that Amazon had helped ship at least 150 containers of goods from China since October 2016, according to shipping documents collected at ports of entry that were compiled by Ocean Audit, a company specializing in ocean-freight refund recovery for shippers.
As of the beginning of 2018, Amazon’s freight shipping arm has shipped over 5,300 shipping containers from China to the United States. Amazon provides either simply the trans-Pacific portion of the trip or end-to-end service for companies that want it. That can include pick-up at the factory door in China, shipment across the Pacific to a U.S. port, and trucking to Amazon fulfillment centers in the United States. Amazon Logistics and Beijing Joyo have published rates in their publicly accessible tariffs that describe the types of services and fees that their clients can utilize.
Amazon embarked in earnest on building its own last-mile network after UPS failed to bring orders to customers in time for Christmas in 2013, costing Amazon millions of dollars in refunds. [WSJ]
In 2018, Amazon ordered 20,000 Mercedes-Benz vans from Daimler. Since developing its own delivery network in 2018, Amazon .has built up a fleet of 30,000 last-mile delivery trucks and vans. As of Dec 2019 Bloomberg’s report, it has more than 800 delivery contractors in its last-mile network employing 75,000 U.S. drivers.
Amazon also has announced plans to order 100,000 battery-powered delivery vans from Rivian Automotive, an electric car-making venture it purchased a stake in earlier this year. The first of those battery-powered vans will hit the road in 2021.
Prime Air, the Amazon-branded planes, first debuted in Aug 2016. It first plane is a Boeing 767 owned by Atlas Air that had been converted into a freighter. Amazon announced deals with two aircraft leasing companies — Atlas, and another called Air Transport Services Group, or ATSG — in May 2016 to fly as many as 40 dedicated cargo planes over the next two years. [recode]
Atlas Air will be phasing in 20 Boeing 767-300s to carry Amazon’s freight, under the terms of a 10-year lease and a seven-year maintenance and operation contract. ATSG says its air services will eventually operate just as many planes for Amazon: 12 Boeing 767-200s that are covered by five-year leases, plus eight 767-300s with seven-year leases. [geekwire]
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In May 2019, the main Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport broke ground. Amazon will invest $1.5 billion. It can park 100 cargo jets and will open in 2021.
In 2019, after FedEx ended the services with Amazon, it announced a partnership with GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS) to lease an additional 15 Boeing 737-800 cargo aircraft. These fifteen aircraft will be in addition to the five Boeing 737-800’s already leased from GECAS and announced earlier 2019.
“These new aircraft create additional capacity for Amazon Air, building on the investment in our Prime Free One-Day program,” said Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Amazon. “By 2021, Amazon Air will have a portfolio of 70 aircraft flying in our dedicated air network.”