Amazon is poised to disrupt another industry, competing with companies such as C.H. Robinson and Uber Freight. The e-commerce giant launched a trial version of its online freight-brokerage platform, undercutting market prices by between 26 to 33 per cent, according to FreightWaves.
Amazon, which delivered a first-quarter earnings beat last week, relies on a nationwide network of trucking carriers to move huge volumes of products across America. The service is “intended to better utilise our freight network,” and has been around “in various forms for some time,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in an email.
Amazon is offering “beta service” access to 53-foot full truckload dry van freight in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland, according to its website, which urges customers to “tap into the scale of Amazon as we extend our carrier network to give you best-in-class service at great rates.”
It charges about US$709 to transport freight from Albany, New York, to Washington, DC — a discount of just over 33 per cent to DAT’s broker-to-carrier spot rate of about US$1,066, according to FreightWaves, which described the service as a “free, margin-less brokerage.”