Amazon expands less-than-truckload freight to any business through its supply chain services

Amazon said it has expanded its less-than-truckload (LTL) freight offering so that partial-load shippers, including businesses outside of Amazon’s own selling ecosystem, can use its trucking network. The move gives companies that need pallets delivered to a specific door or facility an option to pay for shared trailer capacity rather than reserving and paying for a full truckload.

Amazon’s expanded LTL service is being positioned as part of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), a broader portfolio that packages logistics capabilities for third parties. While LTL historically refers to shipping freight that does not fill an entire truck, Amazon is pitching its version as pallet-based, using its existing transportation capacity and adding GPS-enabled tracking as part of the experience.

In coverage of the announcement, Amazon framed the update as moving beyond an earlier scope that focused on shipments moving into Amazon. The new offering, according to the reporting, extends LTL shipping to a wider range of destinations, including third-party warehouses, distribution centers, and retail partners. Amazon also said the offering is intended to serve businesses of “all sizes,” using its network to provide cost-effective freight shipping and more flexible capacity planning.

Amazon Supply Chain Services is described as the umbrella through which the company is making its logistics network available externally. The newly expanded LTL product is tied to Amazon’s broader capacity across trucks, trailers, and containers that Amazon has built and refined over time. A report citing the company’s details said the network includes more than 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers, numbers Amazon has used previously to describe the scale of its transportation operations.

For context, the service is not Amazon’s first attempt to bring external customers into parts of its logistics stack. Over the past year, Amazon has been broadening ASCS in stages, while also expanding and advertising fulfillment and parcel services for non-Amazon businesses. The LTL update fits that pattern by adding another freight lane for companies that do not want to commit to full truckloads or operate routes that match the rhythm of their manufacturing and distribution schedules.

Industry watchers have likened Amazon’s supply chain services strategy to an integration play, the same concept behind Amazon Web Services in cloud computing, where Amazon sells access to infrastructure that previously supported only internal workloads. In that framing, offering LTL to more shippers increases the surface area of Amazon’s “one-stop” logistics offering, potentially drawing attention away from traditional freight brokers and regional carriers, particularly for customers who value tighter tracking and predictable execution.

Amazon did not provide additional granular commercial terms in the material circulated with this announcement, such as pricing formulas, minimum pallet quantities, regional coverage limits, or standardized service-level guarantees. It also did not disclose, in the public materials referenced in this coverage, what share of its shipping volumes will be handled through ASCS LTL in the near term, or whether the company expects the expansion to affect near-term margins.

What to watch next is how quickly Amazon scales the service to new lanes and whether it publishes clearer service commitments for partial-load shipments. Customers will also be looking for implementation details, such as how the booking and pickup process works for shippers, and whether Amazon’s tracking and capacity management translates into faster transit times and stable costs relative to traditional LTL providers in the markets it serves.