Amazon has purchased thousands of its own trailers, according to the Chicago Tribune, which covered the company’s announcement at McCormck Place in Chicago, as a further investment in controlling its own logistics from warehouse to customer.  The new acquisitions will carry Amazon branding and will transport products between warehouses and sortation centers. 

This is only one of several steps Amazon is taking to increase its logistics capacity, including building out a huge network of fulfillment centers (77 as of the end of this year), to which it is now adding sortation centers (20), which process completed shipments into groupings by zip code for tendering to carriers for the final miles, according to the The Street.

Amazon is “staffing” those warehouses with tens of thousands of Kiva robots (as well as many human employees), made by the warehouse technology company it acquired in 2012 (see “Amazon Deploys 15,000 Robots”).

The company is also beginning to experiment with taking control of its air freight network by contracting for dedicated aircraft to haul its freight, according to a report by Vice site Motherboard.

And, of course, Amazon is famously experimenting with drone delivery as a way to deliver goods the same day they’re ordered. 

See videos below for the latest in Amazon’s drone technology.