Amazon plans to significantly curb the growth of its third-party delivery partners this year, following a two-year ramp-up period that has left its logistics network with excess capacity across its warehouses and workforce.
Amazon expects to add just 451 new delivery partners this year, a 33% drop from last year’s 670 new launches, according to internal documents obtained by Insider. This year’s projection would be less than half of the 1,191 new partners it signed up during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, and the 1,114 it added in the first 18 months of the program between 2018 and 2019, the document shows.
The slowdown in new delivery contractors, formally called Delivery Service Partners, comes at a time when Amazon is grappling with slowing growth and overcapacity issues in its supply chain. Faced with unprecedented demand during the pandemic, Amazon expanded too much, too fast, building warehouses and hiring people beyond what it currently needs, the company’s CFO Brian Olsavsky said last month.