Marketplace Briefing: Amazon picks up speed in rural America with $4 billion delivery push
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Amazon.com shoppers in far-flung U.S. towns are getting their packages faster as the company pushes deeper into rural America.
While Amazon’s shipping speeds for remote parts of the U.S. lag those in urban and suburban areas, the company has narrowed the gap over the past year and a half, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. In a Tuesday report, the Chicago-based research firm said 16% of rural customers received their most recent Amazon.com order via same-day or one-day delivery, up from 8% in mid-2024.
The increase reflects Amazon’s $4 billion logistics push to triple the size of its rural delivery network by the end of 2026, bringing same- or next-day delivery to more than 4,000 small towns and rural communities across the country. The effort builds on decades of investment in fast delivery across cities and suburbs, while also helping Amazon reduce its reliance on third-party carriers by bringing more of its logistics operations in-house. It also puts the company into more direct competition with Walmart, which has long dominated retail in rural America through its extensive store footprint.
“Amazon wants to be the everything store, and then, in parentheses, the everyone store,” said Josh Lowitz, partner and co-founder at CIRP. “Amazon is not ready to abdicate any significant segments of American shoppers. Using its logistics prowess, it’s leaning into ways it can serve those customers better.”
CIRP’s findings are based on surveys of about 2,000 Amazon customers conducted over the past year, drawn from quarterly surveys of roughly 500 recent shoppers who were asked about their latest purchase and delivery experience. The firm has tracked these trends for more than a decade, including whether respondents live in rural, suburban or urban areas, allowing it to measure how delivery speeds have changed over time.
Amazon said its faster delivery push expanded same-day and next-day service to more than 4,000 small cities, towns and rural communities across 44 states in 2025, in part by converting existing rural delivery stations into hybrid facilities that serve multiple logistics functions, according to a company spokesperson. The expansion has increased the availability of everyday essentials such as coffee, paper towels and batteries, which now rank among the most frequently reordered items in rural areas, the spokesperson said, adding that the average number of rural customers using same-day delivery each month nearly doubled last year.
CIRP found that rural customers still receive a larger share of their orders on slower timelines. About 34% of rural shoppers reported two-day delivery on their most recent order, roughly in line with urban and suburban customers, but 50% said their package took three days or longer, compared with 33% of urban customers and 38% of suburban customers.
The data suggests Amazon’s recent logistics investments have largely sped up already fast deliveries rather than significantly reducing the share of slower shipments, which account for about half of rural orders.
Rural shoppers make up about 24% of Amazon’s U.S. customer base, compared with roughly half in suburban areas and 26% in urban areas, according to CIRP. This data is consistent with the overall U.S. population, federal data shows.
More control
Amazon’s rural delivery push builds on a logistics network that has taken more than a decade to assemble. Amazon says it aims to eventually have over 200 rural delivery stations serving around 13,000 zip codes spanning 1.2 million square miles — an area the size of Alaska, California and Texas combined.
The company now operates around 560 delivery stations across the U.S., including more than 150 that serve rural markets, according to estimates from logistics consulting firm MWPVL International. The consultancy also estimates Amazon is adding 40 new sites annually, and will reach over 632 hubs by 2027.
Amazon’s rural buildout helps the company shrink its reliance on third-party carriers, which have in the past bungled deliveries for the e-commerce giant. In 2013, a combination of last-minute orders and bad weather overwhelmed Amazon’s delivery partners, UPS and FedEx. As a result, the carriers failed to deliver many Amazon packages on time for Christmas. Amazon issued $20 gift cards and apologized to customers. The Wall Street Journal reported that just months after Amazon’s Christmas snafu, the e-tailer was starting to experiment with last-mile deliveries.
“They want total control over the customer experience,” said Marc Wulfraat, president and founder of MWPVL. “They’ve come to realize the only way they can guarantee that is if they manage it themselves and not rely on other parties.”
Amazon’s accelerating rural delivery push comes as the e-commerce giant’s relationship with the U.S. Postal Service, which has historically handled many of its rural packages, has grown more strained. Amazon said in a blog post last month that contract renewal negotiations with the carrier unraveled in December when USPS exited discussions at the “eleventh hour.” The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Amazon planned to sharply reduce the number of packages it routes through USPS after the two failed to reach an agreement.
“Our goal was to increase our volumes with USPS, not reduce them — until USPS abruptly walked away at the eleventh hour in December,” Amazon wrote in its statement.
Amazon added that it remains committed to partnering with USPS and has repeatedly requested conversations with the carrier’s leadership to find a solution, but warned that time is running out to come to a deal. Amazon’s current contract with the agency expires in September.
Amazon versus Walmart
Amazon’s delivery push into America’s heartland encroaches on turf dominated by its brick-and-mortar rival Walmart.
Walmart, founded in 1962, has a head start in rural areas of the country thanks in large part to the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s massive fleet of 4,600 stores. Walmart said on an August earnings call that its same-day delivery reached 93% of the U.S. population and that it expected coverage to hit 95% by the end of the year.
Both Walmart and Amazon have been laser-focused on speeding up their deliveries. Amazon reported that it delivered more than 13 billion items either the same day or next day in February. Meanwhile, Walmart said during its most recent earnings call that customers using its express delivery service grew more than 60% in 2025.
Same-day is Amazon’s fastest-growing delivery offering, with nearly 100 million U.S. customers using it in 2025, CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in February. Rural customers saw some of the biggest gains from the faster delivery push last year, with nearly twice as many monthly shoppers receiving same-day delivery compared with the prior year, he added.
Amazon’s expansion intensifies its rivalry with Walmart as both companies race to improve delivery speeds, according to Sky Canaves, principal analyst at eMarketer. While Walmart’s strength is in groceries, perishables and store-based fulfillment, Amazon’s lies is its broader product assortment, she said. This is reflected in data on rural customers’ shopping preferences. Numerator survey data cited by Bloomberg shows 76% of rural shoppers prefer to buy groceries from Walmart, compared with 14% for Amazon. On the flip side, 60% of rural shoppers prefer to buy apparel at Amazon, while 33% choose Walmart.
Still, Amazon sees an opening in rural areas where physical retail options may be limited or far away. In some communities, Walmart remains “a weekly shopping trip,” Canaves said. “It’s not down the road, it’s five or 10 minutes, 90 minutes away,” Canaves said.
Amazon’s faster delivery speeds could also help deepen engagement with rural shoppers by making the platform more central to their purchasing habits and more “top of mind for consumers,” she added.
What I’m reading
- The turf war between Amazon and Walmart is playing out in towns across the country, Bloomberg reports.
- Amazon’s new brick-and-mortar strategy, Project Kobe, blends supercenters with warehouses, according to Business Insider.
- Amazon will new new small-business credit cards with U.S. Bank and Mastercard, the company announced.
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