Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone

The last-mile network also protected Amazon from the exigencies of UPS and FedEx, and the political winds that battered the USPS. When Donald Trump accused Amazon of ripping off the U.S. Postal Service and threatened to raise rates, the company disagreed, but the result of the dispute hardly mattered. Amazon now had the leverage to shift that volume to its own network and to another shipping partner, UPS. The carrier had recognized that Amazon had changed the dynamics of the industry. In 2019, UPS announced that it would finally deliver on Sundays, bowing to customer expectations and the pressure that Amazon’s around-the-clock cycle was exerting on its e-commerce rivals. As the post office had years before, UPS had to renegotiate its contract with the Teamsters to allow it to create a new category of drivers who would work weekend shifts at a reduced pay scale.