Amazon Prime Delivery Speeds Hit New Records While USPS Delays Mount

Amazon announced that its Prime delivery speeds hit new records in the first quarter of 2024. For the first time, the company saw over 2 billion items delivered to Prime members around the world on either the same day or the day after the customer placed their order.

Amazon’s Statistics on Rising Prime Delivery Speeds

In a press release, Amazon said it “set new records for Prime delivery speeds in the first three months of 2024, with more than two billion items arriving the same or next day to Prime members around the world.” The company also provided the following statistics:

“In March, nearly 60% of Prime member orders arrived the same or next day across the top 60 largest U.S. metro areas, and we delivered three out of four items the same or next day in London, Tokyo, and Toronto.”

A Brief History of Amazon’s Prime Delivery Network

Amazon first launched Prime in 2005, which offered free shipping for Prime members on one million items. Per the company, over 300 million items now come with free shipping for Prime members. Of those items, “tens of millions of products” come with either same-day or next-day delivery.

Amazon announced large-scale initiatives to upgrade its own logistics network in 2019, including investments for new trucks, drones, and a fleet of planes to rival major carriers like PS and FedEx. During May of that year, the company broke ground on a Prime airport in Kentucky, centrally located to provide one-day shipping to Prime customers in the U.S.

In November 2023, the total number of Amazon deliveries overtook UPS and FedEx in the United States for the first time, eclipsing 5.9 billion packages delivered via the company’s in-house logistics and delivery network in the year.

As Amazon’s Delivery Gets Faster, USPS Faces Mounting Mail & Package Delays

Amazon’s announcement comes as USPS faces mounting mail and package delays in parts of the U.S. where it has opened new facilities. The opening of these new facilities is meant to streamline operations and is one of the key points in the Postal Service’s 10-year “Delivering for America” plan.

Notably, a March audit of the Postal Service’s repurposed Regional Processing & Distribution Center (RPDC) in Richmond, Virginia, showed that on-time service performance for First-Class Mail sat at around 65% in the region. The figure marked a 21% decline from the previous audit.

The Richmond audit—which was conducted by the USPS Office of Inspector General—led to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifying on the inefficiencies in a Senate hearing. During the hearing, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff highlighted the problems that USPS also faces in other parts of the country, remarking that only “36 percent of the mail is being delivered on time” to constituents in his state.

When meeting with lawmakers this week, Postmaster General DeJoy reportedly stressed that USPS expects on-time delivery in areas where it is modernizing facilities to stabilize by summer.