Amazon reaches milestone on delivery speed

Online retail giant Amazon has delivered more than 5 billion items within a day globally and increased its same- or next-day delivery rate by 30% year over year, the company announced on Tuesday. 

“Tens of millions of our most popular items are available with free Same-Day or One-Day Delivery, which means Prime today offers 20 times more selection that can be delivered twice as fast as when Prime first launched…” the company said in a press release. 

The company noted that it offers same-day delivery in more than 120 metro areas across the U.S.

In the first half of 2024, the online retailer has also reduced the distance items travel by 10% year over year. 

Artificial intelligence has helped predict product demand, enabling Amazon to better predict inventory placement, the company said. 

“Combining machine learning with regionalized inventory means more orders can ship from a single local site — reducing transportation distance by placing the right products closer to our customers to fulfill orders quickly,” Amazon noted. “Through scaling this effort in the first half of the year, we increased the average number of items per box in the U.S. compared to the same period in 2023, which reduced the number of required deliveries for these items.”

Related:Big winners on Amazon Prime Day: Drink mix, trash bags, snail lotion

Amazon said it has regionalized its network to get products closer to shoppers, “which means items are traveling fewer miles and experiencing fewer handoffs between the time an order is placed and the time it arrives on customers’ doorsteps.”