Satish Jindel, head of SJ Consulting out of Pittsburgh, says heās heard from several carrier executives in recent weeks that Walmart has relayed such a message to them. Walmart isnāt explicitly telling its contracted carriers not to do business with Amazon, Jindel says. Rather, the company is saying āif they are doing business with Amazon, then [Walmart] may choose not to do business with them,ā says Jindel.
The carriers whom Jindel refers to arenāt large mega fleets. Instead, theyāre carriers in the 100-300-truck range, Jindel says.
Though Walmart and Amazon in recent years have entered into a battle for online retail dollars, Walmartās message to carriers could be more pragmatic than antagonistic. Jindel says one of Walmartās chief concerns is freight cyclicality and securing trucking capacity to move during busy seasons. āThe genuine concern is that when [Walmart] needs 30 trucks from a company, that they get those 30 trucks instead of losing out because they are [working] for Amazon,ā he says. The company is āprotecting its ability to get capacity when they need it,ā he says.
The practice isnāt unique to Walmartās trucking operations, however, Jindel says. The company has told other suppliers that if they work with Amazon, particularly if they leverage Amazonās cloud storage business, thatās in invitation to be dropped by Walmart. The cloud storage concerns are based on Walmartās proprietary data passing through or being stored on Amazon servers. āI donāt want that information in the hands of my competitors,ā says Jindel.
