Vertical integration. What percentage of Fedex, UPS, and USPS business is Amazon deliveries? I might be worried if I was in their shoes.
Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#12My initial interpretation of the title was that someone at Amazon had managed to purchase truck trailers for Amazon on Amazon.
Not yet, but soon. First they need to buy the truck trailers to keep in stock, then they need to buy the larger truck trailers to transport the truck trailers during shipping.
Reminds me of ship shipping ships
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that...
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#13It's been mentioned before (I think I saw it here) but trailers like these would be such a great launch platform for drones. They'd no longer be limited to X miles from the Distribution Center, but could just send relatively few trucks out to strategic locations optimized for that day's deliveries, and let the drones launch from there and automatically deliver. Have battery-swapping robots on the truck too so that yo…
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
At the scale amazon operates at, you probably do know in advance what the day's deliveries will be. I'm sure they could fill a truck with product, cruise a set route, and be reasonably certain it would all be delivered by the end of the day.
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#14It's been mentioned before (I think I saw it here) but trailers like these would be such a great launch platform for drones. They'd no longer be limited to X miles from the Distribution Center, but could just send relatively few trucks out to strategic locations optimized for that day's deliveries, and let the drones launch from there and automatically deliver. Have battery-swapping robots on the truck too so that yo…
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
I think on amazons scale, the number of people buying a good within a large area would have some near term predictability I would imagine. In fact I would be surprised if Amazon does not speculatively dispatch goods ahead of time to local warehouses based on projected demand for orders that have not been placed yet.
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
At the scale amazon operates at, you probably do know in advance what the day's deliveries will be. I'm sure they could fill a truck with product, cruise a set route, and be reasonably certain it would all be delivered by the end of the day.
We appear to be perfectly in sync!
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#16Maybe they want to standardize trailers so loading will work better. This may be a step towards robotic loading and unloading.
What's not standard about them already? Like most things with Amazon they want to do faster/cheaper and not relying on third parties is a great way to do that.
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#17It's been mentioned before (I think I saw it here) but trailers like these would be such a great launch platform for drones. They'd no longer be limited to X miles from the Distribution Center, but could just send relatively few trucks out to strategic locations optimized for that day's deliveries, and let the drones launch from there and automatically deliver. Have battery-swapping robots on the truck too so that yo…
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
A lot of people don't actually want or need 30minute delivery, and are perfectly happy with Amazon's free delivery that takes a few days. I can get two hour delivery here in London, but I've used it once.
Amazon could get a product to a local centre, then instead of sending a van out driving all day going to one customer after the other, they'll hit a few key locations near multiple customers and launch drones out to serve them at the same time.
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#18My initial interpretation of the title was that someone at Amazon had managed to purchase truck trailers for Amazon on Amazon.
The title is rather poorly worded. There is no need for "its own".
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
I think on amazons scale, the number of people buying a good within a large area would have some near term predictability I would imagine. In fact I would be surprised if Amazon does not speculatively dispatch goods ahead of time to local warehouses based on projected demand for orders that have not been placed yet.
They even have a patent for shipping orders to customers before they are anticipated to purchase it (pre-order delivery!).
Re: Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered, within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-demand.
A lot of people don't actually want or need 30minute delivery, and are perfectly happy with Amazon's free delivery that takes a few days. I can get two hour delivery here in London, but I've used it once. Amazon could get a product to a local centre, then instead of sending a van out driving all day going to one customer after the other, they'll hit a few key locations near multiple customers and launch drones out to…
Their goal is not have free delivery take a couple of days. I got a free same day delivery recently and that's definitely what they aiming for.