Is Amazon taking over the world? Like a giant squid, Amazon’s tentacles are spreading out in all directions. Not only does it want to deliver every conceivable item directly to your door, it wants to carry that package across the land, sea and air all by itself.

And when a $336 billion company decides it wants to dominate its delivery, investing opportunities pop up. Profit Catalyst Alert found one of those with our new portfolio holding Air Transport Services Group, from which Amazon will lease 20 planes.

We’ll be searching for other stocks that will benefit from this monumental shift in strategy by the world’s biggest store. Growth Stock Strategist, our sister publication, just recommended Supreme Industries, which is tangentially benefiting from these delivery trends.

Climb the Wall

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is known as a control freak. New recruits to the company are told to memorize the company’s 14 “Leading Principles” on which they will be quizzed later. Bezos has told exhausted employees who have hit the wall to “climb the wall”.

In addition to commanding his employees, Bezos wants to command every aspect of the company’s delivery process. Although many think of Amazon as a retailer, it is mainly a distributor of other companies’ goods. Recent developments highlight Amazon’s increasing hunger to control every step of distribution from warehouse shelf to front porch.

In the last year Amazon has bought thousands of trailers, applied for an ocean freight license, filed with the FAA for drone delivery zones, hired thousands of delivery people for its last-mile network and leased a total of 40 airplanes for package delivery, including the 20 from Air Transport.

From manufacturing Floor to the Front Door

Amazon has always been an expert at warehouse distribution. The company, which started as a bookseller in 1994, rapidly expanded into distributing everything from clothing to lipstick to kayaks.

It has infamously used Kiva robots to supplement its partially automated process and improve the speed and reliability of warehouse product sorting. Amazon now has almost 70 regional distribution centers across the United States and is rapidly leasing space on college campuses to get one step closer to its customers.

Once Amazon conquered the quagmire of deliveries from its primary warehouses, it quickly shifted its focus to commandeering the transportation of packages among manufacturers, distribution centers and customer doorsteps. Most retailers outsource this process to logistics providers: trucking companies and air delivery providers like UPS and FedEx. While Amazon still uses these providers for the bulk of its deliveries, it is slowly pulling this process under its own wing.

The late delivery fiasco of the 2013 holiday season hastened Amazon’s desire to deliver products itself. Amazon Prime customers found themselves empty-handed on Christmas morning when UPS and FedEx couldn’t keep up with last-minute orders.

With almost 54 million Prime members, almost half of U.S. households, Amazon has a lot of promises to keep regarding next-day delivery. The recent addition of 11 cities to the 16 already set up for same-day delivery escalates the pressure to perfect its delivery service.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

In addition to the 20 planes that Amazon is leasing from Air Transport Services Group (NSDQ: ATSG), it will lease an additional 20 from regional player Atlas Air. Air Transport took off 17% on the news and Atlas Air catapulted 27%. The terms disclosed for both deals look quite similar.

 Amazon will lease 20 planes from each carrier, including aircraft management and logistics support. Although both companies will see earnings plateau this year due to start-up expenses for the program, we believe the long-term earnings boost will be greater for Air Transport because of its smaller size.

Amazon has two programs in place to gain better control over the last mile of delivery. One program, called Amazon Logistics, subs out delivery to local companies with available capacity in their vans. The second program, Amazon Flex, enlists individuals to become independent contractors and use their own cars to deliver packages.

Although it is not selling its truck boxes directly to Amazon, Supreme Industries (NYSE: STS), a stock newly recommended on Growth Stock Strategist, has enjoyed renewed growth in demand for its smaller trailers as a result of increased urban delivery.

Of course, the big question for many investors is whether UPS or FedEx are viable shorts based on these developments. Although neither company counts Amazon as a customer representing 10% of its revenue, Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak warns the loss of any Amazon business may hurt the carriers.

In its most recent quarter FedEx was unable to increase profits in its ground delivery division despite a 30% increase in revenue.

Management blamed that performance on the higher cost of delivery and expects retailers to pay higher rates for larger items.

We’ll be spending a good deal of time digging through both companies’ financials to see if a bear case has any merits.

In the meantime, we’ll be scouring Wall Street for stocks set to take off on Amazon’s coattails.