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Comment by cylinder | Hacker News Reader

I love Prime, but there's no way that shipping a 20-roll pack of paper towels[1] that cost less than the store, in a giant cardboard box, in two days via an airplane to my door, is sustainable. They are taking a loss, even factoring in the membership fees, and at some point they won't be able to get away with it any longer.

[1] Or a big heavy television. Or anything else you can find on Amazon.

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I would guess this is why amazon keeps expanding their distribution footprint so much. I would hazard a guess a rather large percentage of the US population is already in a 2-day ground shipping radius. In the past couple years, I can only think of one or two things shipped via prime that came via air mail, even overnighted stuff came ground.

> I would hazard a guess a rather large percentage of the US population is already in a 2-day ground shipping radius.

I live in a fairly low population state, and there are at least 2 major UPS distribution centers within a 3-6 hour drive. My small town also has an UPS office and ground facility where shipments through them to the surrounding communities originate. Even FedEx has distribution centers nearby (although their shipping here is notoriously slow and clumsy).

So, I'd believe it. I can't think of anything gets shipped out here via air and much of this area is rural. The only reason Amazon's "free" shipping is slow to this region is likely because they probably hold orders destined for a specific area or zip code until they can get a bulk shipping rate on all of the items and send them out via the same carrier. I've speculated about this before because Amazon will happily hold onto items for 1-2 weeks via free shipping that will arrive within 2-3 days after they've been marked as "shipped." Amazon Prime shipped items usually arrive within 2 days, and like you, I'm pretty sure those are overnight ground.

Amazon very carefully tracks the profitability of each SKU they sell. If they're selling it to you, they've figured out how to do it profitably. Consider that you'd pay a similar price for it in a retail store, where it had to be handled multiple times, stocked on a shelf, subject to theft and loss, etc. - there's enough margin to cover that, so if Amazon can drop it in a box and ship it to you for less, they can make money on it.

I don't know why this got any downvotes, it's absolutely true. If someone's going to downvote something, they should always at least comment on what they don't like about it.

It's not necessarily true. It's just idle / uninformed speculation with almost no insight into Amazon's internal operations or supporting facts. That's why it's getting downvoted.

Just because he doesn't know how they can do it profitably doesn't mean they don't know how to do it profitably.

On the paper towels I agree, but large electronics like TVs are sourced from local warehouses and hand delivered similarly to how Best Buy would do so.

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