Finn Green works for the US Post Office as a rural carrier associate in and around Ojai, California. On a typical Monday, Green and other rural postal carriers deliver Amazon packages for hours without overtime pay. When mail volume is higher, such as days following legal holiday weekends and holiday seasons, carriers are ordered to prioritize Amazon parcels over Express and Registered mail, the US Postal Service’s (USPS) most expensive products. Only after completing the Amazon deliveries may carriers return to their regular route to deliver USPS mail.

Amazon’s recent statement about its relationship with the USPS presents a carefully constructed narrative. Since 2013, USPS has delivered Amazon packages through a program colloquially known as “Amazon Sundays.” The contract was up for renegotiation this year, and the stakes were high. Amazon brings in $6 billion in annual revenue to the federal agency, which is on the brink of bankruptcy. The 2026 negotiated contract resulted in the USPS delivering 80 percent of Amazon packages it had previously handled, an outcome USPS had no real power to refuse. Amazon, for its part, calls this a “long-standing partnership.” The relationship is not as mutual as Amazon suggests.

Amazon’s relationship with USPS is that of an independent, dominant tech corporation leveraging a financially strained public institution whose survival depends on the multibillion-dollar contract. Green explicitly pushes back on the idea that Amazon is “saving the day” and instead suggests that Amazon is also dependent on USPS for rural and last-mile delivery, where private logistics are too costly to replicate. Although Amazon presents itself as a high-tech delivery giant, its ability to promise cheap, fast, and near-universal shipping is absolutely reliant on USPS’s public infrastructure and labor.