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Seems like a bump in the road, but it's something Bezos has to stay on top of to not be too long term to lose investor interest. FedEx/UPS + Amazon merger woul

Seems like a bump in the road, but it's something Bezos has to stay on top of to not be too long term to lose investor interest. FedEx/UPS + Amazon merger would still be a good move and lock up last-mile distribution that only WalMart would be able to touch, but then WM would have to pay a premium for whichever chair would be left.

wpietri 12y ago
Nah. They're building their own distribution network. FedEx is great at being FedEx, but Amazon wants to be able to do same-day delivery with multiple time-slots per day. They also want local warehouses, which minimizes wasteful shipping.
- midas007 12y ago
  Amazon is missing the entire last-mile delivery pipeline apart from some shared boxes and jokes about quadcopter delivery. Also, Google Express is way ahead given the number of trucks and cars going about from Costco and other local merchants, which is coming at Amazon from the other side. Building it would effectively be starting from scratch and competing with FedEx, UPS, DHL and everyone else. And if it doesn't work, they'll be stuck with capital tied up in it. Further, it's going to take a long time and a LOT of capital, and it still might not work AND still not be any better/cheaper, whereas FedEx is a known quantity that works. FedEx has a lot more experience than just delivery: it does lot of logistics and emergency logistics outsourcing for a lot of companies... and it would still be viable revenue if Amazon controlled them.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I take it your city doesn't have Amazon Fresh vans all over the place yet?
    - midas007 12y ago
      Mountain View (for obvious reasons I guess): Google Express. But really, what difference is there over just extracting the functionality of local courier into a stand-alone global service with an web presence, API, support, backoffice fleet management/dispatching and so forth? All FedEx and UPS have to do to compete with this is send drivers into stores.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

wpietri 12y ago

Nah. They're building their own distribution network. FedEx is great at being FedEx, but Amazon wants to be able to do same-day delivery with multiple time-slots per day. They also want local warehouses, which minimizes wasteful shipping.

midas007 12y ago
Amazon is missing the entire last-mile delivery pipeline apart from some shared boxes and jokes about quadcopter delivery. Also, Google Express is way ahead given the number of trucks and cars going about from Costco and other local merchants, which is coming at Amazon from the other side. Building it would effectively be starting from scratch and competing with FedEx, UPS, DHL and everyone else. And if it doesn't work, they'll be stuck with capital tied up in it. Further, it's going to take a long time and a LOT of capital, and it still might not work AND still not be any better/cheaper, whereas FedEx is a known quantity that works. FedEx has a lot more experience than just delivery: it does lot of logistics and emergency logistics outsourcing for a lot of companies... and it would still be viable revenue if Amazon controlled them.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I take it your city doesn't have Amazon Fresh vans all over the place yet?
  - midas007 12y ago
    Mountain View (for obvious reasons I guess): Google Express. But really, what difference is there over just extracting the functionality of local courier into a stand-alone global service with an web presence, API, support, backoffice fleet management/dispatching and so forth? All FedEx and UPS have to do to compete with this is send drivers into stores.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]