It’s a Christmas tradition: You order your gifts online, click “Submit Order” on your shopping cart, and then wait several nail-biting weeks for your gifts to actually show up in time for the holiday. If you’re sick of it, Amazon can’t stand it — and they’re taking drastic steps to eliminate holiday delays for good.
How? By building an entire logistics and shipping operation from the ground up. Yep, instead of relying on FedEx and UPS to get stuff to the door, Amazon is going to lease a fleet of planes, build a trucking operation, the whole bit. And it won’t be cheap, either: According to Time, just one cargo plane will cost Amazon $600,000 a month to lease, and they want twenty of them.
On one level, this makes sense. Amazon has slowly been building toward being your invisible shopper/delivery guy; it’s not uncommon for people to buy toilet paper and other sundries off Amazon and use same day shipping because it’s less time-intensive and costs the same. They’re currently giving away internet-connected “buttons” that literally let you press a button for more laundry detergent. They keep talking about drone deliverybots filling the skies. Amazon’s been looking to ship its own packages for a while.
Still, it’s kind of staggering, and might be bad news for UPS and FedEx. Package delivery contracts can be worth billions, and Amazon taking everything private might cost both companies a fortune. It would also mean that other major retailers might consider bolstering their logistics. One way or another, though, Amazon wants to ensure that when you order Christmas presents, they get there.
(Via Time)
