Amazon will significantly ramp up Prime Air drone capacity this year as part of a multi-pronged initiative to move beyond same-day delivery and deliver e-commerce orders within hours, or even minutes, CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders on Thursday.
Speed is the driving force for Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) logistics operation because management says customers are more likely to complete online orders when faster delivery is promised. At the same time, there is a counter movement in retail away from ultra-fast delivery based on concerns about the unsustainable cost of service and whether consumers really expect quick fulfillment turnaround.
Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon’s top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles.
The more streamlined fulfillment centers have already enabled Amazon to deliver more than 500 million same-day packages in 2026 so far, according to the CEO.
Amazon is scheduled to begin serving customers in the south Chicago suburbs out of two fulfillment centers by late spring or early summer. Each site will have 12 to 20 drones. Prime Air’s flagship MK30 drone weighs 83 pounds and can carry items weighing up to 5 pounds. The drones cruise at about 73 mph and 200 to 300 feet high. Six vertical propellers provide lift, with staggered tandem wings supporting cruise flight. They can fly in light precipitation and winds faster than 20 mph. Parcels are stored in a shoebox-sized fuselage and dropped to the ground from about 13 feet up.
Prime Air in recent months has launched in parts of Kansas City, Kansas; San Antonio and Waco, Texas; the suburbs of Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth; Tampa, Florida; and Tolleson, Arizona, west of Phoenix.
Ultra-fast delivery
Amazon will continue to focus on ultra-fast ground delivery within 20 minutes, which it is testing in India and the United Arab Emirates. The service, called Amazon Now, is also available in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia, and is expanding to Europe. It leverages strategically located, urban micro-fulfillment centers where on-demand workers pick up packaged groceries and household items and deliver them. In India, where Amazon has more than 360 micro-fulfillment centers (and more on the way), Amazon Now orders are increasing 25% month-over-month, with Prime members tripling their shopping frequency once they start using it, Jassy said.
Prime Air will deliver a much larger selection of items than Amazon Now, which is limited to several thousand products.
Jassy said fulfillment centers are able to rapidly churn out orders because of extensive deployment of more than 1 million robots that help stow, pick, sort and transport merchandise within facilities.
Meanwhile, Amazon is aggressively expanding its delivery network into rural areas under a $4 billion investment campaign initiated last year. The average number of monthly same-day customers in rural areas has nearly doubled in 2025 compared to the prior year. Once the expansion is complete, Amazon will be able to deliver more than 1 billion more packages each year to customers in more than 13,000 zip codes across the nation, the CEO said.
Amazon opened two small fulfillment centers in West Virginia to improve delivery times across the state, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced on April 1. It is also opening a new facility in Reno, Nevada.
The push into rural areas is one of the key reasons behind Amazon’s decision to reduce by 20% the amount of parcels tendered to the U.S. Postal Service under a new contract agreement reached this week, according to industry analysts. Once Amazon has built out its rural delivery infrastructure there will be little need to use the Postal Service for last-mile delivery.
“Ultra-fast delivery is the new table stakes. Amazon running three parallel speed programs simultaneously means the delivery expectation floor is dropping. If you operate in grocery, pharmacy, convenience, or everyday essentials, the competitive benchmark will move from same-day to sub-hour within three years in major metros,” said Nikhil Varshney, a Wayfair supply chain manager who writes a Substack newsletter called the “Silk Road Nexus.”
Is fast shipping critical?
And yet, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, a growing number of online retailers are increasingly reluctant to absorb the cost of fast shipping as delivery prices have risen. Many offer “no rush” shipping options that can take several days after realizing that not all customers are looking for fast delivery. And, it turns out, customers who wait are less likely to return purchases.
Same-day delivery economics typically operate at 15% to 30% lower margins than standard two-day shipping due to route density inefficiencies, higher labor costs per package, and reduced vehicle utilization rates, said Aalok Rathod, a former Amazon Web Services financial analyst, on LinkedIn.
“Amazon trained an entire generation to believe that instant gratification should cost $0. Now every retailer is trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma where not offering same-day delivery means losing customers, but offering it means destroying your contribution margin,” he wrote.
Satish Jindel, a veteran parcel shipping consultant and president of ShipMatrix Inc., said more than 90% of customers don’t need their package on the day it is scheduled for delivery.
“People have this addiction to their cell phone, they flipping around, being bombarded with advertising, can’t resist a buy, and then it sits around at the front door. They didn’t need it , they didn’t need it on that day. That’s why returns are so high,” he said in an interview. “If something is urgent, people will go to the store or pay for same-day delivery.”
“This is what I call Amazon’s Trojan Horse. They’ve got Americans believing they need it and on the same day. The only thing you need the same day is food” or something like an emergency gift, he said. “If fast delivery is offered for free without a premium price, it will be viewed as table stakes for e-commerce retailers and everyone will be offering it without having the favorable economics of Amazon.”
(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that local fulfillment centers enabled 500 million same-day deliveries by Amazon Prime Air this year. They have made it possible for Amazon Logistics to make that many same-day deliveries, by van and drone.)
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.
RELATED STORIES:
Amazon takes delivery convenience to next level
Amazon overtakes US Postal Service as largest parcel carrier
How DHL tackled mail and parcel boom during peak Easter season
Freight Fraud Symposium
Double brokering. AI deepfakes. Identity theft. Freight fraud is an existential threat to the industry. Get ahead of it.
Supply Chain AI Symposium
Past the hype. Join operators, founders, and enterprise leaders figuring out how to deploy AI in supply chain.
Future of Rail Symposium
Reshoring is rewriting freight demand. Join shippers, rail executives, and government officials to shape the next decade.
Double brokering. AI deepfakes. Identity theft. Freight fraud is an existential threat to the industry. Get ahead of it.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame • Cleveland, OH Register NowPast the hype. Join operators, founders, and enterprise leaders figuring out how to deploy AI in supply chain.
The Old Post Office • Chicago, IL Register NowReshoring is rewriting freight demand. Join shippers, rail executives, and government officials to shape the next decade.
The Signal at Chattanooga Choo Choo • Chattanooga, TN Register Now