At this year’s F3: Future of Freight Festival, Amazon Freight General Manager Ari Silkey offered a detailed look at how Amazon’s transportation network has evolved. During a keynote address, Silkey described how the company has steadily turned its internal logistics expertise into external solutions for shippers.
Rather than a few big, headline-grabbing breakthroughs, Amazon’s progress has come from years of deliberate, incremental innovation. That approach has helped build one of the most technologically intensive logistics networks in the industry.
Taking the long view
The session opened with an unexpected topic: trailers. Silkey traced their history back to 1898, when carmaker Alexander Winton created the first trailer to move cars between dealerships without adding extra miles. Since then, trailers have evolved through improvements in aerodynamics, fuel efficiency and embedded technology.
Silkey said Amazon’s own transportation network grew in a similar way—by solving one customer problem at a time. Quoting Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, he noted, “It often takes decades for an overnight success.”
Over Silkey’s nine years at Amazon, he’s scaled the company’s transportation operation from an idea into a vast network. The company started with a technology-first mindset, building the Amazon Relay mobile app as its foundation, then layering in hardware, software and sensors across trailers and tractors. Planning algorithms now process billions of route combinations.
What began with trailer purchases in 2015 has grown into a fleet of more than 70,000 Amazon-branded trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers.
Technology with purpose
Throughout the presentation, Silkey stressed that every technological investment must solve a real problem. Amazon’s “customer obsession” philosophy remains at the core of that mindset.
Amazon’s commitment to solving real-world problems through innovation guides every choice the company makes. At its core, the innovation process requires significant trial and error, and arriving at a solution that works in the real world is invariably a show of fortitude.
Transportation technology faces well-known challenges—fragmented data, limited standardization, visibility gaps and disjointed tools and system—along with real-world disruptions from traffic and weather. Gartner projects that 92% of companies will still fall short of full end-to-end resiliency next year. Amazon’s approach to solving those problems begins on the ground, with the drivers who use its tools every day.
Designing for drivers
Amazon’s driver feedback has played a major role in refining Relay. Through ride-alongs and roundtables, the team learned that drivers wanted more than just navigation. They wanted trip planning tools that helped them prepare before getting behind the wheel. Early versions of the app didn’t offer that, and drivers often relied on pen and paper or separate map apps instead.
That feedback led to the pre-trip briefing feature, which provides route details, weather updates and other information before each trip. Behind the scenes, the system identifies not just the fastest routes but the safest ones, based on road classifications and network data.
Amazon has also focused on preventing cargo theft. Drivers now use photo verification before and after pickups, confirming that the assigned driver is the one completing the load.
Smart trailers and proactive maintenance
Amazon began rethinking the role of trailers in 2016, viewing them as connected data sources rather than just boxes on wheels. At the time, that vision surprised trailer manufacturers and IoT partners—but it’s paid off many times over.
Today, Amazon’s trailers include GPS tracking, tire inflation systems, and sensors that monitor doors, cargo and overall trailer health. The tire systems have been especially valuable. Amazon added monitoring to track tire pressure trends across the fleet. That allows maintenance teams to address issues before they escalate—an essential capability when managing thousands of tires across 70,000 trailers.
AI in action
Silkey pointed to disruption management as a strong use case for generative AI. Amazon’s Relay Operation Center supports drivers in real time and relies on quick, accurate decision-making.
When a driver calls with an issue, agents need to confirm what’s happening, understand how it affects the route, and find the best way to keep freight moving. Silkey gave a real-world comparison from his own experience—being stuck in New York City traffic on the way to the airport. If that had been a truck driver, generative AI tools would verify the traffic, check the freight’s schedule, and help determine whether it could withstand a delay.
A chat assistant within the system lets agents ask follow-up questions, helping them resolve issues faster and more accurately. That’s improved both performance metrics and the driver experience, helping keep freight—and drivers—moving safely.
The quiet revolution
Silkey closed by saying that true transportation innovation isn’t about sudden breakthroughs but steady, behind-the-scenes progress. Moving goods from point A to point B more safely and efficiently has always been the goal. Technology simply helps accelerate that process through consistent, focused improvement.
Amazon plays the long game, prioritizing durability over hype. The same systems that power its own logistics network now support external shippers through Amazon Freight, offering access to the technology and assets that were built to serve one of the most complex supply chains in the world.
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