The cold war between America's two largest retailers just turned hot. 

In a note this morning from Deutsche Bank's freight and logistics analyst Amit Mehrotra, he notes that  the "WMT vs. AMZN battle is heating up" and points to a report by DV Velocity, according to which a well respected transportation industry consultant told attendees of a logistics conference that Walmart (WMT) is telling trucking companies that it will no longer do business with them if they continue moving goods for Amazon (AMZN). 

This follows similar reports citing WMT's "request" for its tech partners to stop using Amazon Web Services. 

The news, while suggestive perhaps of Walmart's growing desperation in its war with the retail juggernaut that is Amazon, has dramatic implications not only for the future of retail (and associated prices) but for one of the most important US industries: trucking, and the number of people it employes. 

According to Deutsche, these developments, "are likely to have significant implications for U.S. transportation companies, in our view, as Amazon and Walmart remain two of the largest users of truckload capacity. For reference Walmart represents about 14% of SWFT's operating revenues and traditional retail accounts for about half of WERN's total sales (WMT around 4%)."