FedEx Corp.’s drive to reap the rewards of e-commerce is stirring anxiety among some of the company’s most important partners: the thousands of small businesses that handle its ground deliveries.

This year’s railroad slump is getting worse as a slowdown in manufacturing threatens broader weakness in the U.S. economy.

A $20 billion investment spree detailed by UPS CEO David Abney last year, a plan that initially rattled Wall Street, is bearing fruit. Profit margins are improving even as 112-year-old Big Brown copes with swelling volume from voracious online shoppers, who are typically less lucrative to serve than business customers.

FedEx Corp.’s retreat from handling packages for Amazon.com Inc. signals that the lines are being drawn in the battle over surging e-commerce shipments.

Robots that can see, learn and grip different items are advancing quickly into the retail, food-and-beverage, and consumer-packaged-good industries. While deliveries of robots to the U.S. auto industry fell 12% last year, shipments to food and consumer-product companies soared 48%.

FedEx Corp. has fired a new weapon in the simmering U.S.-China trade war, suing the Trump administration to block enforcement of trade restrictions that had placed the company in Beijing’s crosshairs.

As FedEx Corp. and UPS Inc. beef up automation to keep pace with surging e-commerce and a potential threat from Amazon.com, they’ve been stumped at a crucial stage: loading and unloading trucks.

UPS Inc. is counting on algorithms you can’t see to prove that investors were wrong to doubt its three-year, $20 billion technological makeover. It’s all part of CEO David Abney’s bet on squeezing out costs and becoming more nimble as UPS adjusts to surging e-commerce deliveries.

UPS Inc. and a startup drone partner began the first continuing commercial drone deliveries in the United States, making a short flight carrying a medical sample between North Carolina hospitals March 26.

After building a fortune and several businesses by buying company after company, XPO Logistics Inc. CEO Brad Jacobs is abandoning acquisitions, a principal reason many investors bought into the stock.