Amazon’s LTL service, designed for shipments typically ranging from one to six pallets and between 150 and 15,000 pounds (about 68 to about 6,900 kilos), was launched in April 2025 on a restricted basis, accessible only for shipments bound for the group’s fulfilment centres through a self-service portal. On 9 June 2026, the ecommerce giant, now also a logistics operator, announced the unrestricted expansion of the service: business customers of any size, and not necessarily sellers on the Amazon platform, can now route their shipments to any destination in the United States, including third-party warehouses, distribution centres and retail outlets. The service is available through the Amazon Freight platform, part of the Amazon Supply Chain Services suite.
The infrastructure supporting the service includes more than 80,000 semi-trailers and around 24,000 containers, with terminals in the main metropolitan areas of the United States, and Amazon says its LTL network has moved “millions of pallets” over the past year. The company also sets out the advantages of its service: seven-day operations, no surcharges for weekend deliveries and no additional fees for residential deliveries. These are conditions that, in the traditional LTL sector, normally represent separate cost items. The announcement had an immediate impact on equity markets: according to Bloomberg, during the trading session on the day of the announcement, shares in major LTL operators such as Old Dominion, Saia and FedEx’s newly independent Freight entity recorded sharp intraday falls, closing between -3% and -7% lower before partially recovering by the close.
This fall came shortly after a period of strong revaluation for LTL stocks. Also according to Bloomberg, Old Dominion had gained almost 60% over the year up to the eve of the announcement, trading at a multiple of 43 times estimated earnings for the following year; Saia was on comparable valuations, compared with a price/earnings multiple of 19 for the S&P 1500 Transportation index. The FedEx Freight case adds another variable: the stock had begun trading as an independent company, following its spin-off from FedEx Corp, less than two weeks earlier, recording a further 25% increase by the eve of the announcement after a fall on its first day of trading.
Analysts differ on the real scale of the threat. Morgan Stanley, in a note by analyst Ravi Shanker, adopted a more cautious reading for traditional carriers: Amazon could “gain significant market share even without immediately offering high-end service levels”, eroding the combination of physical network and service quality that represents the LTL sector’s main competitive advantage. Lee Klaskow of Bloomberg Intelligence takes a different view, arguing that the practical impact on the operations of traditional carriers is likely to be limited: shippers turning to Amazon would mainly be price-sensitive customers, with low-value-added goods and less focus on service levels.
In any case, the move structurally repositions Amazon in the US freight market, confirming that it is no longer simply an operator managing logistics internally to improve its own flows, but a third-party transport services provider competing directly with major national carriers. Integration with the Amazon Supply Chain Services suite, which also includes third-party fulfilment services, full truckload transport and intermodal services, allows shippers to combine multiple modes through a single platform with end-to-end visibility and dynamic pricing, a model that traditional LTL carriers do not offer in the same form.
M.L.
