Amazon Takes a Big Step Toward Finally Making Its Own Deliveries

This past Christmas, when delivery delays left many Santas empty-handed, Amazon’s biggest vulnerability was exposed: It doesn’t control the last, most important step.

Amazon is brilliant at getting orders out its own doors, but with rare exceptions, it relies on third parties—mainly UPS and FedEx—to get those orders onto the doorsteps of customers. Over the past year, however, Amazon has been quietly building out its own capacity to do more of what the big carriers do—a logistics upgrade that takes the company one step closer to taking over the entire delivery process for itself.