Sunday Amazon deliveries land in Minnesota

Almost two years after Amazon first launched Sunday package deliveries in New York and Los Angeles, the service has finally come to Minnesota.

Postal carriers in parts of the Twin Cities, Duluth and Rochester have been delivering Amazon orders on Sundays since Aug. 16, according to United States Postal Service spokesperson Pete Nowacki.

Postal service workers in the region deliver only Amazon packages on Sundays at this point, Nowacki said, although no further details about the business arrangement are publicly available.

The partnership is a big boost to the postal service, which has struggled financially in recent years and threatened cuts to service.

"The big shift, the thing that's caused all of the challenges we have, is the decline in first class mail over the last 10 to 15 years," Nowacki said. "What we're finding is that people order stuff online, they want it, they want it quickly, and this is an opportunity for us to grab a bigger share of that package market and provide a service that people are looking for."

Amazon first launched Sunday deliveries in parts of New York and Los Angeles in late 2013. The Sunday delivery service has since been expanded to over 1,200 sites.

Officials with Amazon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.