Amazon broke ground on its $1.5 billion airport development near Cincinnati on Tuesday.

CEO Jeff Bezos made a surprise appearance at the opening, hopping aboard a front loader to lift the first pile of dirt.

Amazon is taking further control of its shipping process while seeking to cut costs and speed up delivery times.

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Jeff Bezos kicked off work at Amazon's new $1.5 billion airport development near Cincinnati on Tuesday.

Bezos, who reportedly made a surprise appearance at the opening, hopped aboard a front loader to lift the first pile of dirt. "If you're wondering, that's fun," the Amazon CEO said after stepping down from the machinery.

Amazon agreed to a 50-year lease for more than 900 acres of property from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 2017. This space is close to the size of the global hubs of top cargo airlines, according to the Associated Press.

Amazon plans to take greater control of its shipping process and become less reliant on carriers such as UPS, FedEx, or the US Postal Service as it seeks to cut costs and speed up delivery times. This will be especially pertinent to its plans of one-day shipping for Prime members.

Read more: Amazon says it's cutting its Prime 2-day shipping guarantee to just one day

"This hub is going to let us get packages to customers faster, and that's a big deal," Bezos said, according to Cincinnati's WCPO-TV. "We're going to move Prime from two day to one day, and this hub is a big part of that."

The development is expected to open in 2021 and bring 2,000 jobs to the airport.

Watch Jeff Bezos' full video here: