For Amazon, home deliveries did what drones could not

Nearly seven years ago, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos predicted a major leap forward for his company: drone deliveries of lipstick and books to your door. That attention-grabbing technology has barely gotten off the ground and might never be widespread.

But over that same period, Amazon did something else that has transformed home delivery without as much buzz. It effectively built from scratch its own network of package centers, trucks and delivery vans that now handle a majority of Amazon customer orders that used to be dropped off by the Postal Service, UPS or other parcel companies.