How Amazon Built Its One-Day Delivery Supply Chain
The CTO Podcast with Fexingo · 2026-06-08 · 8 min
Episode notes
In 2019, Amazon announced it would convert Prime shipping from two days to one day. Most people saw a marketing promise. Engineers saw a logistics nightmare. This episode unpacks how Amazon rebuilt its fulfillment network - restructuring inventory placement, rethinking sortation center algorithms, and launching its own air hub in Cincinnati - to make one-day delivery economically viable across millions of SKUs. Lucas and Luna walk through the key architectural decisions: how Amazon used machine learning to predict demand at the zip-code level, decoupled its fulfillment centers from its transportation layer, and absorbed a multi-billion-dollar cost that competitors couldn't replicate. They also touch on the trade-offs: higher inventory carrying costs, pressure on warehouse labor, and the environmental toll of speed. A grounded look at how the world's most demanding logistics system was rearchitected from the inside out.
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