Amazon's rural hubs speed up reliable delivery. In 4 years, the company could deliver to every U.S. ZIP code.

A look inside Amazon's 17,000-square-foot Missoula facility. 
(Photo by Eric Dietrich, Montana Free Press)

Amazon is betting that its rural hub expansion plans will help it increase sales and delivery services to its more remote-living customers while lessening its dependence on the U.S. Postal Service, reports Sean McLain of The Wall Street Journal. The company "aims ultimately to have 200 rural delivery hubs serving around 13,000 ZIP Codes covering around 1.2 million square miles of America — an area the size of Texas, California and Alaska combined."

By opening rural hubs, Amazon hopes to "reduce its reliance on the U.S. Postal Service, a relationship that has become rocky following a dispute over contract terms," McLain writes. The company has also used United Parcel Service to complete the final leg of deliveries, which hasn't always gone smoothly either. "In 2013, a sudden surge in Amazon orders overwhelmed UPS, causing some packages to not make it in time for Christmas."

Residents in Conner, Montana, who used to wait about a week for their packages to arrive, are already reaping the benefits of speedy deliveries from the rural hub Amazon built on the outskirts of Missoula. Now most Conner-bound packages arrive within Amazon's traditional two-day window. McLain adds, "Around 14,000 packages leave the [Missoula] warehouse on an average day."

Rural Amazon routes require delivery drivers to carefully plan and be ready to handle extreme weather, big horn sheep, dirt or mud roads, high winds and mountain passes. McLain reports, "Deliveries to the Missoula warehouse come from a large urban hub in Spokane, Wash., a three-hour drive across two mountain passes."

Despite backcountry travel and weather challenges, Amazon plans to "construct around 40 to 50 new delivery hubs a year," McLain reports. At that pace, the company should "be able to ship packages to every U.S. ZIP Code in four years."