Amazon To Take on UPS & FedEx With New Delivery Service

Amazon is setting its sights on another industry disruption: shipping. The Wall Street Journal reports Friday morning that the online retailer is going head to head with the likes of UPS and FedEx with its new program, called Ship with Amazon.

SWA will have the the Seattle-based company picking up packages from businesses and delivering them to customers, the report says. Amazon is set to begin the new program in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, starting with—you guessed it—third-party sellers that list their products on Amazon. It could expand to more cities as soon as later this year, people familiar with the matter told WSJ.

Amazon has been working toward owning every part of its delivery process for awhile. TechCrunch notes that “the retail giant has its own fleet of cargo jets, its own warehouses, its own last-mile contract couriers and can even act as an ocean shipping agent, just like both FedEx and UPS. It’s been reported for a while now that Amazon would eventually compete directly with its longstanding delivery partners.”

This could be a benefit for consumers, as last year, an Amazon-instituted delivery penalty had some USPS workers allegedly marking packages as delivered when they hadn’t been. And in more delivery news, Amazon also announced this week that it will be delivering Whole Foods groceries to Prime Members within two hours.