Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Postal Service and Amazon are partnering on a pilot enabling same-day delivery for Amazon packages brought into the agency’s network in the afternoon, a company spokesperson confirmed to Supply Chain Dive.
- Through the pilot, Amazon packages brought into the Postal Service network between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. local time are able to be sorted by clerks and delivered by city mail carriers between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. the same day, according to a Sept. 21 memo published by postal news website Postaltimes.com.
- The pilot was slated to begin Tuesday at the Morgantown, West Virginia, sorting and delivery center and the Lake Havasu City, Arizona, facility, per the memo from the National Association of Letter Carriers union. The locations will each have a volume limit of 200 packages and three required delivery routes for the pilot, with no anticipated end date.
Dive Insight:
While Amazon has rapidly grown its in-house delivery capabilities in recent years, the e-commerce giant still relies on the Postal Service to deliver a portion of its packages. The additional scheduled "drop" of Amazon packages at USPS facilities — on top of the typical morning drop — will expand services and options for customers, Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said in an email.
"For example, orders placed later in the day would now be eligible for same day delivery through this pilot," Clark said. "The process is the same otherwise."
The pilot bolsters Amazon's ability to reach customers with same-day delivery speeds, which has been a growing priority for the company to meet customer demand in categories like food and essentials. This year, Amazon has announced one-hour and three-hour delivery options, in addition to a planned sixfold increase of its drone delivery coverage that can reach customers in as fast as 30 minutes.
Although the partners' same-day delivery pilot is starting on a small scale, it is scheduled to expand to the Postal Service's Columbia, South Carolina, sorting and delivery center on Oct. 20, with a volume cap of 500 packages and five required routes, the memo said.
Packages from Amazon are a key source of revenue for the financially ailing Postal Service, with Amazon saying it has spent over $5 billion with the agency in recent years. The two package delivery giants reached a scaled-back shipping agreement earlier this year.
One way the Postal Service has been looking to shore up its finances is through better utilizing its expansive U.S. network for faster shipping speeds. In January, the Postal Service launched a bidding process for shippers to reserve capacity at last-mile facilities, with successful bidders able to bring volume to those locations for same-day or next-day delivery.
The USPS did not provide comment on the pilot by publication time.
