At the turn of the last decade, Amazon.com Inc. seriously planned to expand its delivery services to businesses beyond the retail sector. Then the pandemic hit, and those plans could go straight into their business wheelhouse, dealing a major blow to FedEx and UPS Inc., but were put on hold.

The question is whether Amazon has now begun to re-engage in the process. If so, the catalyst could be the possibility that Teamsters' unions will strike against UPS, whose actions could bring much of UPS's operations in the U.S. to a halt and put millions of packages out there for people to pick up. Experts say the Teamsters strike could occur when the current contract expires on July 7, which could cause UPS to lose market share permanently while other companies gain market share permanently.

"All vessels except UPS are going to go up," said Andrew Townsend, president and CEO of LSO, a regional package delivery company primarily located in the Southwest.

Amazon definitely has the ability to take advantage of that," Townsend said. "In a pinch, I'm willing to bet that retailers will succumb to using their long-term competitors as carriers."

Amazon is UPS's largest customer by revenue, with just over 11% of revenue according to the latest annual figures. Satish Jindel, head of consulting firm ShipMatrix, said that if Teamsters clashes with UPS, Amazon will move the business in-house to deliver through its delivery partners.

According to ShipMatrix, that revenue translates to 185.9 million packages per day, or about <>% of UPS's total daily parcel volume in the United States.

Not only will the business go back to Amazon, but also shipments handled by UPS from third parties and other Amazon merchants, Jindal said.

He said that as the days without a deal go by, people will look for capacity. Amazon declined to comment on the matter.

Kindall said the strike would be a timely way for Amazon to enter door-to-door competition for non-Amazon online orders. By 2022, Amazon was already using its network of contracted drivers to deliver 1300 million packages per day. Kindall said it will be ready with enough capacity to handle the number of UPSs, just as it tested door-to-door service before the pandemic.

Dean Maciuba, head of U.S. operations at Crosswinds Parcel Consulting, isn't buying it. "First, as a last-mile delivery company, Amazon doesn't have the capacity to fill any gaps. They needed to be an integrated carrier" — meaning the pick-up part of the operation — "to make a difference, but they didn't," Maciuba said. "Also, Amazon didn't want to mess up their service by trying to deliver UPS packages before or during the strike."

Josh Taylor, senior director of professional services at consulting firm Shipware LLC, agrees. "I don't think Amazon is particularly interested in doing all of this," Taylor said. "They have the money and the experience to do it. It's just that it has better places to spend money. ”

Taylor said Amazon will earn more attractive returns by continuing to market itself as a fulfillment/delivery partner to a third-party customer base and taking a commission of about 15 percent from the services provided.

Jeremy Tancredi, a partner in supply chain at management consulting firm West Monroe, believes Amazon will play a role in outbound deliveries for the UPS business. However, due to Amazon's lack of pickup capacity, it is unlikely that it will launch a service in time to manage integrated operations, he said.

"From everything I've seen, though, it's an opportunity," Tancredi said of Amazon's pursuit of UPS's outbound deliveries.