UPS to cut 30,000 jobs as it moves away from Amazon

Parcel delivery giant UPS says it will cut up to 30,000 jobs this year as it further reduces shipments for its biggest customer, Amazon.

The world’s largest package delivery company has been scaling back deliveries for the online retail giant, which it says are “extraordinarily dilutive” to its profit margins.

UPS says the job cuts would be made through buyout offers to full-time drivers and by not replacing staff who leave the company voluntarily.

At the same time, it reported earnings of $24.5bn (£17.7bn) for the final three months of last year. It also forecast a surprise increase in revenue to $89.7bn for the year ahead.

Last year, UPS said it would start to reduce its dependency on Amazon as part of a turnaround plan, which would see the company focus on more profitable customers like healthcare companies.

It cut 48,000 jobs and closed 93 facilities in 2025 as it reduced its Amazon deliveries. UPS has said it will close another 24 facilities in the first half of this year.

“We’re in the final six months of our Amazon accelerated glide down plan and for the full year 2026, we intend to glide down another million pieces per day while continuing to reconfigure our network,” said chief executive Carol Tome.

According to its 2024 annual report, UPS had about 490,000 employees with nearly 78,000 working in management. The firm has a unionised workforce.

UPS also said it was officially retiring its fleet of MD-11 cargo planes following a deadly crash in Louisville, Kentucky in November. The planes, which make up about 9% of the firm’s fleet, had been grounded since the accident.

UPS shares closed slightly higher in New York trading on Tuesday.

Amazon has significantly increased its own delivery services in recent years, breaking up the dominance of UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service (USPS).

In 2024, Amazon handled 6.3 billion deliveries in the Unites States, beating both UPS and FedEx. By 2028, Amazon is projected to overtake USPS for US delivery volumes, according to Pitney Bowes’ parcel shipping index report.