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I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.

Today we conclude our FedEx versus UPS series. In our last episode, Amazon had once again taken a financial hit to get ahead of the shipping game, cutting out its need for FedEx and UPS and turning them into the competition.

But there's one more link in the shipping chain that FedEx, UPS and even Amazon hasn't cut loose. You may have heard of it. Is the United States Postal Service?

Yes, the USPS doesn't just provide a low-cost, essential service to citizens and small businesses.

Private shipping companies also sometimes hire the post office to take care of last mile deliveries, which means carrying packages the last mile from a local shipment center to your house.

But that might be changing as FedEx is slowly but surely becoming more self-sufficient and may plan to cut some of its ties with the Postal Service.

Does that mean UPS will follow? And if so, will your shipping rates rise as the post office faces cut back later this year?

To learn more about these and other subjects related to shipping, we're talking with Soutra Vita Kudali. She is a digital business strategy and e-commerce expert at Forrest or Research.

She'll discuss how FedEx and UPS are responding to the post offices struggles and how they're trying to stay competitive with Amazon. All that's coming up next.

Hello, I'm Hannah and I'm Surya T and we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly True Crime Podcast.

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Hello, it is Matt and Alice from British Scandal here and we wanted to let you know that this season we are very excited to be covering the Cambridge Spies.

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So, Chareda Kodali, welcome to Business Wars. Thanks for having me, David. Now I talked a little bit in our introduction about FedEx and UPS's relationship with the Postal Service, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about why these companies have relied on the USPS for those last mile deliveries.

Yeah, so when we look at logistics and package delivery, there are three components. There's the pickup component like somebody picking up your package or are you dropping it off somewhere. There's the transportation of it where it gets from point A to like wherever the city is where it needs to be delivered.

And then there's the delivery component and the delivery component is where it actually gets into somebody's hands. The places in particular where the large carriers have worked with the Postal Service is in that delivery component primarily.

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