AMERICAN e-commerce giant Amazon.com has become its own biggest carrier in the days before Christmas, the company announced, reports New York's Air Cargo World.

In the US, most deliveries are accomplished this way while nearly half are delivered by Amazon, a surge in orders UPS and FedEx were not able to handle.


Amazon logistics chief Dave Clark said the company would deliver 3.5 billion packages this year, exceeding predictions by Morgan Stanley analysts who estimated 2.5 billion packages.


Amazon has stocked its warehouses for decades, but once relied exclusively on the likes of UPS and FedEx to take packages to a customer's doorstep.


The Seattle company began to expand its capacity to move packages on its own following a disastrous 2013 holiday season, when rough weather and logistical bottlenecks led to missed deliveries and angry shoppers.


Mr Clark says Amazon now contracts with more than 800 delivery service partners, who employ a combined 75,000 drivers in the US. They take packages from some 150 delivery stations located in major US metropolitan areas.