Leadership1 distinct publisher3 min readPublished
An internal forecast reviewed by Business Insider puts Amazon's own network at 88.7% of its US packages by 2029, ahead of the company's earlier plan. What UPS and USPS still carry stays roughly flat while Amazon's own volume absorbs the growth.
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Subtract the first-party projection from the plan's own totals and the residual left for everyone else comes out near 1.9 billion US packages in 2027 and near 2.0 billion in 2029 [1]. Amazon's own network takes roughly 3.6 billion of the 3.7 billion package increase across those two years, about 97% of the growth [2]. Volume that flat functions as coverage Amazon has not yet chosen to build, which is a different asset from a growing account.
That distinction is what reprices the remainder. The packages Amazon keeps handing out are increasingly the ones its own density cannot reach cheaply, and Amazon is buying into that tail directly: it has committed more than $4 billion to triple its rural network by the end of 2026, with rural projected at just over 11% of first-party volume [12]. Business Insider also reports that some outside carriers have already pulled back or changed the capacity they offer [14]. A shipper negotiating against a carrier's cost base in 2026 is negotiating against density whose largest single contributor is scheduled to stop contributing.
The Postal Service arithmetic shows how a falling share can hide a flat volume. Ten percent of a 14.1 billion package total in 2027 is about 1.41 billion; 8% of 17.8 billion in 2029 is about 1.42 billion [3]. The April contract set a floor of 1.27 billion, 19% under the previous minimum, which implies an old floor near 1.57 billion [7][5], and the preliminary allocation of roughly 1.4 billion sits about 10% above the new floor [6]. Against the prior plan's 13% share, applied to the same 2027 total, USPS loses something like 400 million packages of expected work, though the older plan's total volume is not in the document as reported [4].
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that internal projections are "preliminary, subject to significant revision" and should not be treated as definitive or as finalized plans [9]. Fair enough as far as forecasts go, but two items in the same story are executed rather than projected: the signed April contract with its lower floor [7], and UPS's decision to cut the volume it handles for Amazon by more than half [8]. What we genuinely do not know is where the share sits now. The last public figure was over two-thirds in 2023 [3], so the roughly 22 point climb to 88.7% is measured from a disclosure two years old [7].
Amazon's side of the trade is fixed cost in exchange for control. Sub Same-Day rises from 17.1% to 21.3% of first-party volume, which works out to about 2.1 billion packages in 2027 and about 3.4 billion in 2029 [11][8], all of it through nodes Amazon pays to keep close to customers, with much of the last mile run by Delivery Service Partners and Flex contractors rather than employees [10]. Andy Jassy's stated rationale is demand-side: faster delivery leads customers to consider Amazon for more of their purchases [13]. The bill is peak season and the rural tail, which carriers used to absorb.
For anyone else buying parcel capacity, the contract signed this quarter is the one that matters, because a three-year rate is underwritten by network density the plan says will be flat by the time the term ends.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
In 2023, Amazon said it delivered over two-thirds of its own packages in the US, the last time it publicly disclosed that figure.
Under the plan, total US package volume grows from roughly 14.1 billion in 2027 to 17.8 billion in 2029, an increase of about 3.7 billion packages, while volume allocated to outside carriers barely changes, hovering around 2 billion packages.
Amazon's prior plan allocated roughly 13% of US packages to the Postal Service in 2027, compared with about 10% in the newer forecast, with that share falling to 8% by 2029.
The USPS contract signed in April establishes a minimum of 1.27 billion packages, 19% below the previous contract's minimum, and Amazon's preliminary plan allocates about 1.4 billion packages annually to USPS, with the final amount depending partly on the capacity and coverage of Amazon's own network.
Sub Same-Day's share of Amazon's first-party package volume is projected to grow from 17.1% in 2027 to 21.3% in 2029.
An Amazon internal planning document from late July, reviewed by Business Insider, projects Amazon's own delivery network at 86.3% of its US packages in 2027, 87.4% in 2028 and 88.7% in 2029.
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1 article · September 3, 2026
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One document, one reader
Everything load-carrying — 88.7%, 15.8 billion packages, the 1.27 billion Postal Service floor — comes from a single late-July planning document that only Business Insider has seen, and Amazon's response is that such documents are numerous and heavily revised. What earns the score above guesswork is that the figures reconcile: shares, package counts and totals agree with each other, and the 2023 'over two-thirds' disclosure anchors the curve at one public point. What holds it down is that no second document, no other outlet and no carrier confirms any of it.
Contracts already moved; the plan years haven't
Two of the shifts are done deals rather than forecasts: the Postal Service signed a contract in April with its minimum cut 19%, and UPS chose to more than halve the volume it carries for Amazon. The $4 billion rural buildout is committed money with a 2026 date on it. Against that, the 2027–2029 columns are allocation intentions, and the reporting is candid that the final Postal Service number depends on how much of the country Amazon's own network can actually reach.
Headline firmer than the document
The reporting is disciplined in the body — 'preliminary forecast,' the spokesperson quoted at length, the dependency on Amazon's own reach spelled out — but 'on track' in the headline turns a revisable internal projection into a trajectory, and the most striking line, that outside carriers get essentially none of 3.7 billion packages of growth, is an inference from two numbers in one plan. Small overstatement, mostly in framing rather than fact.
A leak Amazon would rather soften
Three pulls run through this. Whoever handed over the document had a reason for choosing the version showing the steepest in-housing curve, and Amazon's reply — many versions, significant revision — is exactly the reply a company gives when it does not want a forecast read as guidance ahead of contract talks with the Postal Service, whose deal expires in 2029. Business Insider, for its part, flags the figures as previously unreported and closes with a tip line. None of that makes the numbers wrong; it does explain which numbers surfaced.
Specific, coherent, unconfirmed
Confidence sits mid-range for an unusual reason: the granularity cuts both ways. Figures like 17.1% and 1.27 billion do not come from paraphrase, and the volumes divide cleanly into the shares — but precision from one unverifiable document is precision, not proof. Where the story touches the public record, UPS's pullback and the April contract, it holds; where it projects three years out on Amazon's own arithmetic, one revision inside Amazon would change it and no reader outside the company would know.