# Amazon Overtakes USPS: What It Means for E-Commerce Sellers **Author:** Robert Parr **Date:** 2026-04-25 **Description:** Amazon now delivers more packages than the US Postal Service. Here's what this structural shift means for brands, 3PLs, and the future of e-commerce fulfillment. **URL:** https://thrive3pl.com/blog/amazon-overtakes-usps-new-era-us-delivery --- > **TL;DR:** Amazon delivered 6.7 billion packages in 2025, overtaking USPS (6.6 billion) as the top US parcel carrier by volume -- three years ahead of industry projections. For e-commerce brands, this reshapes the carrier landscape in ways that affect shipping costs, delivery speed, and how much control you retain over the post-purchase experience. Brands working with carrier-agnostic 3PLs are best positioned to adapt. For the first time in American postal history, a private company delivers more packages to US doorsteps than the United States Postal Service. According to a March 2026 ShipMatrix report, Amazon's logistics arm handled 6.7 billion packages in 2025, edging past USPS at 6.6 billion. UPS came in third at 4.4 billion -- an 8.6% year-over-year decline -- and FedEx placed fourth at 3.6 billion. I think it is worth pausing on that for a moment. A company that did not deliver a single one of its own packages a decade ago now moves more parcels than a government institution with 240 years of infrastructure behind it. This is not a temporary blip driven by a single holiday season. It is a structural realignment of last-mile logistics in the United States, and it has real implications for every brand that ships products to customers. ## The Numbers Behind the Shift Pitney Bowes had previously projected Amazon would reach the top carrier position by 2028. It happened three years early. The reasons are straightforward. Amazon expanded its rural delivery network, reduced its reliance on UPS as a shipping partner, and continued growing its online sales volume. Meanwhile, both FedEx and UPS have been deliberately pulling back from low-margin business-to-consumer parcel delivery -- the very segment that represents most e-commerce orders. Here is where it gets interesting: overall US parcel volume grew just 0.4% year-over-year in 2025, while parcel revenue grew 4.1%. The pie barely got bigger, but the slices shifted dramatically. Amazon gained share. UPS and FedEx lost volume but increased revenue per package. USPS lost its top position for the first time. The total US parcel market is projected to reach approximately 24.6 billion packages in 2026 -- roughly 66.8 million packages per day. Amazon's share of that volume will almost certainly continue growing. ## What This Means If You Sell on Amazon If your brand sells through Amazon -- whether FBA, FBM, or a hybrid model -- this shift means Amazon now controls an even larger portion of your customer's experience. They control the listing, the buy box, the payment, and increasingly, the delivery itself. That has two implications: **First, Amazon's delivery performance becomes your brand's delivery performance.** When Amazon delivers your product and the experience is good, the customer credits Amazon, not your brand. When the experience is bad -- late delivery, damaged package, wrong item -- the customer still thinks of it as an Amazon problem, not yours. Either way, you are invisible in the transaction. **Second, Amazon's logistics dominance gives them even more pricing power over third-party sellers.** FBA fees have been rising steadily, and Amazon's ability to handle more of its own logistics means they have less incentive to keep those fees competitive. They are not bidding against external carriers for your business -- they are the carrier. As we discussed in our piece on [why Amazon is not the easy button anymore](/blog/amazon-isnt-the-easy-button-anymore), the cost of selling exclusively through Amazon keeps climbing while the control you retain over your own business keeps shrinking. ## What This Means If You Sell Outside Amazon For brands building direct-to-consumer channels on Shopify, WooCommerce, or their own websites, the carrier market is moving in your favor -- but only if you are paying attention. With Amazon absorbing more volume internally, UPS and FedEx are competing harder for the remaining non-Amazon parcel business. That competition is showing up in negotiated rates, service improvements, and willingness to work with mid-market shippers that would have been overlooked five years ago. At the same time, regional carriers and alternative delivery networks grew 13% in 2025 -- the fastest-growing segment of the market. Companies like OnTrac, LSO, and Spee-Dee are carving out meaningful positions in specific geographic corridors, often with better last-mile economics than the national carriers. I think the brands that come out ahead in this environment are the ones diversifying their sales channels and their carrier mix simultaneously. As we wrote in our [analysis of Shopify's growing dominance](/blog/shopify-is-the-winner), the shift toward owned channels is accelerating, and the brands making that move need fulfillment partners who can support a multi-carrier strategy. ## The Carrier Landscape in 2026 Here is how the US parcel market breaks down after the shift: **By volume (2025):** - Amazon: 6.7 billion packages (first place) - USPS: 6.6 billion packages - UPS: 4.4 billion packages - FedEx: 3.6 billion packages **By revenue (2025):** - UPS: 29.8% market share - FedEx: 26.4% market share - USPS and Amazon: trailing but growing The split between volume leadership and revenue leadership tells you everything about where the market is heading. Amazon dominates the high-volume, lower-margin B2C segment. UPS and FedEx are deliberately moving upmarket -- prioritizing revenue per package over total package count. USPS is caught in the middle, losing volume to Amazon while lacking the pricing power of the private carriers. For brands, this means carrier selection is no longer a set-it-and-forget-it decision. The optimal carrier for a given shipment depends on the destination, the package weight, the delivery speed requirement, and increasingly, which carrier is offering the best negotiated rate for your specific volume profile. ## Why Your 3PL's Carrier Strategy Matters More Than Ever This is where fulfillment partners become either an asset or a liability. A 3PL that is locked into a single carrier relationship -- or worse, one that defaults to the cheapest option without analyzing the trade-offs -- will cost you money and customer satisfaction as the carrier market keeps moving. What you want is a [fulfillment partner](/blog/what-is-a-3pl-company-complete-guide) that maintains relationships across multiple carriers and can route shipments based on real-time rate shopping, delivery performance data, and geographic optimization. The difference between a carrier-agnostic 3PL and a carrier-dependent one is the difference between adapting to market shifts and being surprised by them. At Thrive, we work with UPS, FedEx, USPS, and regional carriers. We rate-shop every shipment. When one carrier raises rates or changes service levels in a given lane, we adjust. When a regional carrier offers better economics for a specific delivery corridor, we route there. The point is not loyalty to any single carrier -- it is getting your customer's package delivered on time, at the best possible cost, every time. This matters even more now that Amazon has pulled so much volume out of the traditional carrier ecosystem. The carriers that remain are adjusting their strategies, their pricing, and their service territories in real time. A 3PL that is not actively managing carrier relationships on your behalf is leaving money on the table. ## The Bigger Picture: Control and Optionality I think the real lesson of Amazon's logistics dominance is about control and optionality. Brands that sell exclusively through Amazon and rely on FBA for fulfillment have effectively outsourced their entire supply chain to a single company that is also their biggest competitor. Amazon now controls the marketplace, the advertising, the fulfillment, and the delivery. That is a concentration of dependency that should concern any brand with long-term ambitions. The counter-strategy is diversification -- of sales channels, of fulfillment methods, and of carrier relationships. Build your Shopify store. Invest in your own customer relationships. Work with a [3PL that understands multi-channel fulfillment](/blog/best-ecommerce-fulfillment-companies-2026) and can support you across Amazon, DTC, wholesale, and retail simultaneously. The brands that thrive in this new carrier landscape will be the ones that treated optionality as a strategic priority before they needed it -- not the ones scrambling to adjust after their only carrier raises rates or their only channel changes the rules. ## What to Do About It If you are an e-commerce brand watching these shifts, here is what I would focus on: 1. **Audit your carrier concentration.** What percentage of your shipments go through a single carrier? If the answer is above 70%, you have a vulnerability worth addressing. 2. **Evaluate your channel mix.** If Amazon is your only sales channel, the platform's growing logistics control makes diversification more urgent, not less. 3. **Ask your 3PL about rate shopping.** Do they actively compare rates across carriers for every shipment, or do they default to a single relationship? The difference compounds over thousands of orders. 4. **Watch the regional carriers.** The 13% growth in alternative carrier volume is not noise. Regional carriers are offering competitive service in specific corridors, and the brands using them are seeing real savings. 5. **Think about the post-purchase experience.** When Amazon delivers your package, the customer sees Amazon's branding on the box, Amazon's tracking page, Amazon's delivery notification. When your 3PL ships via a traditional carrier, you can own that experience -- branded tracking, custom packaging, personalized inserts. That distinction matters more now that Amazon is handling nearly a third of all US packages. The delivery market just changed hands for the first time in the history of the US postal system. That kind of structural shift does not reverse. The question for your brand is whether you are positioned to benefit from the competition it creates -- or whether you are caught in the middle of it. Robert --- *Published by Thrive 3PL — Houston-based fulfillment for e-commerce brands. Learn more at [thrive3pl.com](https://thrive3pl.com).*