The Wall Street Journal - by Laura Stevens

Amazon.com Inc. is pushing further onto the turf of its shipping partners United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. , enabling small businesses to carry its overflowing supply of packages in the all- important last-delivery leg to the consumer’s door.

The online retail giant on Thursday said it is inviting entrepreneurs to form small delivery companies employing up to 100 drivers and leasing between about 20 and 40 Amazon-emblazoned vans, an initiative that should help it rapidly build out its own delivery network across the country.

It is yet another major push by Amazon AMZN, -0.50% to gain more control over its own deliveries in a continued quest to build a vast freight and parcel shipping network. Amazon says it has to build out its own services simply to handle the surging number of online orders that UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service can’t. More than $4 of every $10 spent online in the U.S. is on Amazon.com, and the number of its deliveries topped more than a billion last year, according to analyst estimates.

Full story here [link] Source: Market Watch