Amazon will let sellers buy less-than-truckload shipping labels for heavy and bulky orders through Amazon Buy Shipping starting in October. Ripley MacDonald, VP of Product and Software Development at Amazon Supply Chain Services, announced the change at Amazon’s Accelerate seller conference last week.
Sellers can buy LTL labels through Seller Central or third-party shipping software. Those orders get “Amazon’s special negotiated rates” and “protection from late deliveries,” MacDonald said.
Starting in early 2027, sellers will be able to set delivery fees for heavy and bulky items by region rather than use one flat rate nationwide. Amazon will also connect sellers with local carriers that can provide same-day or next-day delivery within 100 miles of the seller’s warehouse.
The orders will also run through Seller Flex, an invite-only program in which sellers fulfill Amazon orders from their own warehouses. The seller picks, packs and hands off the order. Amazon handles the rest, including pickup, in-home delivery, placement, installation, customer service and returns.
Shoppers see a specific delivery date at checkout. MacDonald said participating sellers in the program see more than 2.5 times the sales of sellers shipping heavy and bulky orders on their own.
The Buy Shipping labels are separate from the LTL network Amazon opened to all businesses in June. That service handles one to six pallets, or 150 to 15,000 pounds, to destinations across the US, including third-party warehouses and retail partners.
MacDonald says heavy and bulky is one of its “fastest-growing merchant categories.” Other retailers are also building bulky delivery networks. Wayfair expanded CastleGate into a third-party logistics service last year, while Home Depot added real-time delivery tracking this year for large items such as lumber and appliances.
