USPS has been negotiating with a very small number of large businesses – including Amazon – to deliver their packages to the 170 million addresses the USPS serves. But what if the USPS could negotiate with many businesses of all sizes that included regional deals, not just nationwide? It’s about to find out.
Last month, USPS announced it was opening up entry to its last-mile delivery network, and on Tuesday, it launched a new USPS bidding platform.
“Shippers large and small will be able to access the more than 18,000 USPS destination delivery units (DDUs) nationwide via a solicitation process, ” it said last month, when it alluded to Amazon, UPS, and FedEx as dominating its last-mile network: “The Postal Service has been selling delivery service direct from its DDUs for years. However, this has generally been for a limited number of very large customers.”
The Postal Service gave Amazon big wins early on when it entered into a Negotiated Service Agreement that included an exclusive deal to deliver Amazon packages on Sundays (in 2013). Some have claimed in the past that in some cases, Amazon packages were prioritized, whether or not it was a global mandate.
