Amazon Freight Rates vs Relay

Two products that share a brand and not a price

Carriers hear Amazon and assume one desk, one rate, and one app. Amazon publishes a cleaner split. The newsroom note dated August 28, 2023, titled as an explanation of Amazon Freight, Amazon Freight Partner, and Relay, assigns each name to a different person. Freight is for shippers who need product hauled, from large enterprises down to small businesses. Relay is for carriers who want more work in front of their trucks. Freight Partner is for people trying to start or grow a trucking company inside Amazon's program. If a forum post uses the three names as synonyms, the post is wrong before it gets to a dollar.

The rate confusion follows from that mix-up. A shipper who just booked Amazon Freight tells a driver what they paid. A driver who just booked Relay tells a shipper what the load paid the truck. Both numbers can be true on the same day and still not be the price of the same contract. One is a buy. One is a sell. Amazon sits between them when it is the one buying truck capacity and selling a delivered load, and Amazon does not owe either side a public reconciliation.

What Amazon Freight is selling the shipper

Amazon's description of Freight is an external trucking service. The shipper creates an account and gets a quote. Amazon says the service uses the broader Amazon network and, in that 2023 note, 70,000-plus trailers, so empty miles can be sold to shippers outside Amazon's own retail freight. That trailer count is Amazon's figure, not an audit. Treat it as their claim about scale, not as a rate.

The equipment line is specific. Amazon says all of those Freight shipments move in Amazon's 53-foot dry vans and are tracked with GPS. The geography line is also specific. A shipper can send a full truckload inbound to an Amazon facility or externally to the shipper's own consignee. That is a dry-van truckload product with a quote button. It is not a flatbed board, not a reefer board, and not a promise that every lane has instant capacity.

Because the price is a quote, it can change with the lane, the day, the lead time, and whatever capacity Amazon wants to fill. There is no honest way for this page to print low, average, and high Amazon Freight rates. Anyone who does is either logged into an account and looking at one quote, or they are inventing. If you are the shipper, the rate is the quote in your account at the moment you book, plus whatever accessorials that booking actually lists. If you are not the shipper, you do not have the quote, and a carrier should not pretend to.

Larger shippers are pointed, in the same Amazon note, at an enterprise sales address rather than only at the self-serve quote. That is another reason a public table would be false. Negotiated enterprise freight and a one-off quote are not the same price list even inside Freight.

What Relay is offering the carrier

Relay, in Amazon's words, is how a carrier hauls for Amazon. The note lists short-term contracts, contract auctions where the carrier bids, a load board for spot work, and Post A Truck, which matches a posted truck to a trip. Drivers then run the trip in the Relay app, with trip details and truck-legal navigation. That is a capacity marketplace for approved carriers. The price on a Relay load is the carrier's revenue for performing that trip, not the invoice a third-party shipper received from Amazon Freight.

Some Relay freight is Amazon's own network: buildings, relays, and drops that never had an outside shipper at all. Some capacity Amazon buys on Relay may sit under a Freight shipment that an outside shipper booked. You will not see a field on the load that says this is the Freight quote minus the following margin. Looking for that field is how drivers waste an evening. The load either pays enough for the miles, the dwell, and the trailer condition, or it does not.

Carrier-pay writeups already exist, and they are about Relay, not about Freight. Use Amazon Relay rates and Amazon Relay pay per mile when the question is what carriers have been offered. This page is the contrast. It does not repeat those ranges, it does not update them, and it does not bless them as what a shipper should expect to pay on freight.amazon.com. If a number on those pages and a number in a shipper's Freight quote ever look similar, that is a coincidence of two different contracts, not a conversion formula.

Why a versus rate table would be fake

A real comparison needs the same lane, the same day, the same equipment, the shipper's all-in Freight quote, and the carrier's all-in Relay pay for the truck that actually ran it. You almost never have both, because the shipper does not show the carrier the quote, and the carrier does not show the shipper the load offer. Publishing a two-column table anyway would require invented cells. This page refuses those cells.

Even a honest pair of numbers would not be a margin you can arbitrage. You cannot book Amazon Freight as a shipper and then haul it yourself on Relay unless Amazon's own rules and your authority line up, and you should not build a business on a rumor that they do. Freight is Amazon selling transportation. Relay is Amazon buying transportation from approved carriers. Standing on both sides of your own load is a compliance question, not a spreadsheet trick, and this guide is not instructions for doing it.

Accessorials make the gap wider and less visible. Detention, trailer rejection, layover, and trailer-pool rules on the carrier side are not printed on the shipper's quote in a way you can see from the outside. A shipper can be charged for something the carrier is not paid for, or the carrier can be paid for dwell the shipper already baked into a different fee. Without both contracts, you cannot explain the difference. Say that, and stop.

• Shipper question: what did Freight quote for this lane, in this account, today?
• Carrier question: what does this Relay load pay after the miles and the dwell I actually expect?
• Neither question is answered by subtracting the other one.
• Neither question is answered by a national average this site is willing to invent.

Amazon Freight Partner is a third door

The same Amazon note describes Amazon Freight Partner as help starting a trucking business: assets, training, a business coach, and then Amazon-branded tractors with a workload tied to demand. That is a fleet-launch program. It is not a rate you compare with Relay spot pay, and it is not the quote a shipper clicks. Drivers who want to work for one of those companies are pointed at jobs, not at the Relay load board.

If a recruiter mixes the names, separate them before you sign. A Relay login does not make you a Freight Partner. A Freight shipper account does not give you trucks. A Freight Partner agreement is a business launch with Amazon's branding and Amazon's freight, and the economics of that agreement are in the agreement, not in a public rate sheet. This page will not guess the take-home.

How to use each price without lying to yourself

If you ship freight, open Amazon Freight, enter the lane, and read the quote you are actually offered. Compare that quote with other carriers and brokers on the same lane and the same service, including live load versus drop, appointment windows, and who owns the trailer. Do not compare it with a driver's Relay screenshot. The driver's screenshot is someone else's revenue.

If you run trucks, open Relay only after you are approved, and price the load against your cost for those miles. The signup path and the performance rules are their own subjects. The rate conversation, if you want one that is willing to discuss carrier pay, is the Relay rate pages linked above, read as carrier pay with whatever limits those pages already state. Do not email a shipper the Relay number and call it proof that Amazon Freight overcharged them. You do not have their quote.

If you are a dispatcher sitting between the two, say the names out loud on the call. We are looking at a Relay offer is a different sentence from the customer booked Amazon Freight. Mixing them is how a carrier accepts a load at a revenue number that was actually the shipper's cost, or how a shipper thinks capacity is priced at what the truck was paid. Amazon gave the products different doors. Use the door that matches the hat you are wearing.

O Trucking does not set either price. Amazon does, inside the account that is allowed to see it. The only rate this page will stand behind is the one on your screen when you are logged into the correct product.

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