Amazon opens less-than-truckload network to shippers, challenging Old Dominion Freight Line

Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., a top-10 U.S. trucking company and a major Triad employer, may be facing its most daunting competitor with Amazon confirming plans to offer its internal less-than-truckload network to shippers.

Old Dominion, based in Thomasville, specializes in the less-than-truckload sector that allows it to be nimble with its delivery operations during economic cycles.

Old Dominion has not commented on the Amazon entrance. Marty Freeman, Old Dominion's president and chief executive, has been warning since early 2025 about ongoing softness in the domestic economy.

Amazon Freight said Wednesday its less-than-truckload "is officially open for all businesses to any type of destination, bringing the network, technology and reliability of Amazon's supply chain to palletized shipments."

Those shipments are picked up by Amazon Freight, transferred at a nearby terminal and delivered to a final destination still on a pallet. Amazon touts its deliveries would be at a lower cost than available from legacy less-than-truckload carriers.

Amazon said it has terminals across the country and a fleet of more than 80,000 trailers.

According to an Amazon map of its projected less-than-truckload network, there is a significant projection of business in the Southeast, southern California, the Midwest and Northeast urban centers.

"We kept hearing the same thing from shippers: ‘I need LTL that performs like my full truckload service,' " Jim Ruiz, director at Amazon Freight, said in a news release.

"That's a high bar, and it's exactly the one we set for ourselves. This launch is our answer to that challenge and built on the same operational backbone that moves Amazon shipments."

Ruiz said that when Amazon Freight launched inbound LTL in April 2025, it was built for smaller shippers moving loads into Amazon fulfillment centers.

"Now, as part of Amazon Supply Chain Services, we have opened up more Amazon capabilities," Ruiz said.

"This includes shipping to your own warehouses, distribution centers and retail locations, as well as Amazon fulfillment centers."

Amazon initially disclosed its interest in the less-than-truckload sector in 2022.

Speculation of Amazon Freight offering less-than-truckload shipments surfaced with a February 2025 analyst report from JPMorgan Securities.

At that time, there were questions about how much market share that Amazon could gain in the highly competitive less-than-truckload marketplace.

Old Dominion listed on average having 22,264 full-time employees as of March 31. At last count, Old Dominion had 1,318 employees at its Thomasville headquarters, 668 at its Greensboro service center and 107 at the Kernersville service center.

As Old Dominion has expanded into a top-10 U.S. trucking company, it has become an insightful economic bellwether of consumer spending.

Old Dominion operates 256 terminals in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.

A major part of Old Dominion's success has been its focus on reinvesting in equipment, technology and acquisitions.

During fiscal 2025, Old Dominion projects spending $575 million, consisting of: $300 million for real-estate and service-center expansion projects; $225 million for tractors and trailers; and $50 million for information technology.

Old Dominion's overall good reputation will likely continue to stand out to shippers, said Michael Walden, a retired economics professor at N.C. State University.

"Any new competitor presents challenges, especially a competitor as well-known as Amazon," Walden said.

"Old Dominion will need a strategy for going head-to-head with Amazon."

JPMorgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck wrote in a Feb. 24 report that the typical less-than-truckload carrier transports two-thirds of its freight in industrial products and one-third in consumer retail products.

"We are skeptical that Amazon will be able to turn into a stand-alone carrier, let alone a national one, although we still believe the risk is worth monitoring given the long history and perception that Amazon can disrupt any industry it touches," Ossenbeck said.

"We noted that Amazon has not been particularly successful in disrupting other freight modes, like truckload and intermodal, with excess capacity from Amazon Freight," Ossenbeck wrote.

Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, an economics professor at Winston-Salem State University, said Old Dominion should be "very concerned. This is a direct attack on Old Dominion Freight Line from a new competitor with the deep pockets to be able to significantly displace its core business."

"If Amazon is using its significant market power in other areas to try to disrupt the less-than-truckload freight industry by potentially engaging in cross-subsidization to obtain market share, it could and should become the subject of an antitrust investigation."

Jason Seidl, an analyst at TD Cowen, wrote that Amazon's use of an intermodal container pool likely "suggests the offering will primarily compete with the economy sub-segment of the LTL market" that focuses on three- to four-day delivery patterns.

Seidl added Amazon could take some market share "on the margins" from legacy carriers "without driving en masse share exodus."

Benchmark Research analyst Christopher Kuhn wrote Thursday that Amazon Freight's open-to-shippers launch "is strategically logical but not structurally disruptive - at least near term."

"In our view while the service makes sense, it still is not a competitive threat to the full less-than-truckload services that traditional less-than-truckload carriers supply."

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