Amazon Jumps into Freight Brokerage

Not mentioned in the article, but this is interesting because Jeff Bezos invested in Convoy, a Seattle startup working to optimize freight brokerage, back in their seed or series A, forgot which.<p>Though I&#x27;m sure nobody at Convoy, now valued over 1BN, honestly believed Amazon <i>wouldn&#x27;t</i> jump into a market this big and ripe for improvement.<p>Then again, there&#x27;s almost certainly room for dozens of big players. I don&#x27;t think I even comprehend how big the freight brokerage space is, but I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m underestimating it by multitudes.

&gt;Lunak told Transport Topics that in the flurry of reporting earlier in May, some outlets compared Amazon’s spot rates with contractual rates, which she said was not “apples to apples.”<p>Rates are a weird thing in the industry in the sense that nobody pays the up front rate and the &quot;real&quot; rates are heavily discounted.

Japanese and Korean conglomerates&#x27; stocks are usually discounted compared to their parts: their P&#x2F;B is less than one. This is traditionally seen as a inefficiency tax on their underlying value due to their inability to communicate and mobilize internal structures in an efficient manner.<p>Amazon has achieved what many other conglomerates have failed to do: effectively mobilize and monetize every part of their business. This is something that is nothing short of a miracle are is a testament to their organizational structure and managers, most of Jeff Bezos.<p>One would be hard-pressed to find a large diverse company that is as efficient and well run as Amazon.

I’m honestly surprised Amazon hasnt bought Flexport. They seem to “get” how things should work.

Really interesting, odd move imo. As others have said, this is a highly diverse industry, with entrenched players and smaller players as well. I think it&#x27;s interesting to consider &#x27;why&#x27;? Clearly Bezos thinks he can make money at it. A lot of money I&#x27;d wager.

I know it&#x27;s unpopular to talk about limiting Amazon because America is a &quot;free-market&quot; but that&#x27;s the argument of the dumbest kind, it&#x27;s short-sighted. You can&#x27;t compete with them unless you have an advantage they can&#x27;t replicate, they have all the money and can buy any company they need, they can pay the best salaries for the same reason, they own a lot of relevant data in every industry, they can buy all the patents and license them to third-parties so they sue you, etc... I am an Amazon fan, but looking into the future, these companies will rule every aspect of our society.

I stumbled across this article while searching for something related to Amazon Logistics. This freight service and the article are both wildly interesting.<p>But I still don&#x27;t know how to do what I wanted to do in the first place -- does anyone know if there&#x27;s an API that allows querying Amazon Logistics tracking? Basically scan history and estimated delivery date given a TBA######## tracking number.

Now they are heads on competing with Uber.<p>Also heard that they bought a food delivery startup today. Maybe Lyft is next!<p>This will be interesting to watch.

This is a triple whammy for UPS, who is experiencing pressure from:<p>* Self Driving Vehicles<p>* Amazon Freight<p>* Neo-Luddite Teamsters union resisting new tech

Is this similar to what FreightHub is doing?

see: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freight.amazon.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freight.amazon.com&#x2F;</a><p>also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ship.amazon.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ship.amazon.com&#x2F;</a>

At what point does Amazon get broken up? Grocery chains, freight, aws, ecommerce, each of these could be companies on their own. Seems like we&#x27;re heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in every sense.