FedEx Gears Up for All-Out War With Amazon
The pandemic turbo-charged e-commerce — now the two giants are battling over the future of shipping
In August 2019, FedEx made an announcement that puzzled anyone who hadn’t been keeping a close eye on the tick-tock of the shipping industry: The company would no longer deliver packages for Amazon.
Why would a business entirely built around prompt package delivery go out of its way to fire the single largest customer that ships more time-sensitive packages than any company in history?
The breakup, it turns out, had been the culmination of years of a combative and eroding relationship between the two giants. Six years earlier, frustrated with FedEx and UPS delivery delays during the 2013 holiday rush, Amazon began building out its own delivery network for the products it sells and ships. As its network grew, Amazon steadily shrunk its dependence on outside carriers, and especially on FedEx, whose prices tended to be higher than UPS’s. So when FedEx formally severed its relationship with Amazon, they were breaking up with a customer that had essentially already dumped them.
Even after the formal split last year, third-party merchants that sell on Amazon were still free to choose FedEx delivery — until December last year, when Amazon…
