• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Amazon is weighting its options before the expiration of its contract with the U.S. Postal Service next year. 

How the talks are going depends on the source. 

“Amazon is preparing to expand its nationwide delivery network and give up its long-standing partnership with the U.S. Postal Service as talks stall with the mail agency, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, a move that could make the e-commerce goliath the most ubiquitous delivery service in the country and wreak havoc on the postal agency’s long-term financial viability,” according to The Washington Post.

“The company had hoped to come to a new agreement that would have locked in favorable rates and set higher benchmarks for package volume, but formal talks have largely concluded without a deal, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share confidential business information.”

Amazon — whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post — has been in talks with the Postal Service over what the mail agency calls “negotiated service agreements,” which set rates and hasten delivery for its largest clients.  

Contrary to the WaPo story, Amazon told Newsweek and The Verge that it is not exploring the possibility of ending its longstanding partnership with the USPS as it weighs a dramatic transformation in its Prime delivery operation.

"We are not planning to cut ties with the USPS—in fact, it’s the opposite,” company spokesperson Steve Kelly tells Newsweek. “Without a doubt, our goal is to continue working with the USPS, as we have done for the past 30+ years, and are going to continue to push to reach an agreement.”

Kelly made similar comments to The Verge. 

“We’ve continued to discuss ways to extend our partnership that would increase our spend with them, and we look forward to hearing more from them soon - with the goal of extending our relationship that started more than 30 years ago,” Kelly tells The Verge. 

Amazon has long been the U.S. Postal Service’s top customer, providing more than $6 billion in annual revenue to the agency in 2025. 

“Amazon’s ability to entertain this move isn’t coming out of nowhere,” according to Quartz. “The company has quietly built a shadow postal service that, in 2024, delivered 6.3 billion parcels a year in the U.S., just behind the USPS’ 6.9 billion, according to Pitney Bowes’ Parcel Shipping Index. That puts Amazon at about 28% of U.S. parcel volume versus USPS at 31% — and keeps Amazon on track to overtake the government carrier by 2028 if growth holds.”

The company has been spending billions to triple its same- and next-day network by 2026 — adding over 200 delivery stations and boosting rural capacity enough to cover 13,000 ZIP codes and more than a billion additional packages a year.

“So what exactly is USPS doing for a company that already owns planes, sort centers, and blue vans with smiles on them? The Postal Service handles the awkward stuff,” according to Quartz. “Through Parcel Select, high-volume shippers such as Amazon inject presorted packages deeper into the network and let local carriers handle the sweaty door-to-door work. USPS describes the product as a discounted work-share option for big mailers; internal bulletins frame it as the way other carriers tap USPS for the 'last mile,' especially in non-metropolitan and rural areas where it’s the only carrier that goes everywhere — six days a week.”