Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has rolled out its stand-alone shipping service, Amazon Shipping, to 15 major markets.
The service, launched Wednesday, will initially target large shippers that use Amazon’s services but also sell and fulfill through their own channels. Under the service, the company will provide pickups at warehouses and handle the shipments to final delivery.
Ground deliveries will be made in two to five days. This underscores the deferred-delivery nature of the service. Support will be available 24/7, Amazon said. It did not list the markets in announcing the launch.
FreightWaves first reported Amazon’s announcement of the service on Aug. 15.
With rare exceptions, Amazon provides deliveries to merchants tha order from its marketplace and use the company’s Fulfillment by Amazon fulfillment and delivery services. The company has long considered getting into the stand-alone shipping business, which would put it in direct competition with other parcel-delivery carriers. But it has never pulled the trigger.
Amazon planned to roll out such a service in February 2020. However, the subsequent surge in pandemic-related delivery demand forced the company to table the idea in order to manage the tsunami of business that headed its way once e-commerce demand took off.