Amazon, is racing to deliver packages faster and is turning to its employees with a proposition: Quit your job and we’ll help you start a business delivering Amazon packages.
The offer, announced yesterday, comes as Amazon seeks to speed up its shipping time from two days to one for its Prime members. The company sees the new incentive as a way to get more packages delivered to shoppers’ doorsteps faster.
Amazon says it will cover up to $10,000 in startup costs for employees who are accepted into the program and leave their jobs. The company says it will also pay them three months’ worth of their salary. The offer is open to most part-time and full-time Amazon employees, including warehouse workers who pack and ship orders. Whole Foods employees are not eligible to receive the new incentives.
The new employee incentive is part of a program Amazon started a year ago that lets anyone apply to launch an independent Amazon delivery business. It is part of the company’s plan to control more of its deliveries on its own, rather than rely on UPS, the post office and other carriers. Startup costs start at $10,000 and contractors that participate are able to lease blue vans with the Amazon smile logo stamped on the side.
Overall, more than 200 Amazon delivery businesses have been created since the program was launched last June.
One successful startup is run by Milton Collier, a freight broker who started his Amazon delivery business in Atlanta about eight months ago. Since then, it has grown to 120 employees with a fleet of 50 vans that can handle up to 200 delivery stops each per day. Collier is already gearing up for the one-day shipping switch by hiring more people.
This delivery business opportunity could be very important as Amazon begins to roll out machines that pack orders, replacing warehouse jobs.
The company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom-built for each item. Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 employee roles at each location, these people said. That would amount to more than 1,300 cuts across 55 US fulfilment centers for standard-sized inventory. Amazon would expect to recover the costs in under two years, at $1 million (roughly per machine plus operational expenses. The new machines, known as the CartonWrap pack much faster than humans. They crank out 600 to 700 boxes per hour, or four to five times the rate of a human packer. The machines require one person to load customer orders, another to stock cardboard and glue and a technician to fix jams on occasion.
The machines have the potential to automate far more than 24 jobs per facility. The company is also setting up nearly two dozen more US fulfilment centers for small and non-specialty inventory which could be perfect for the machines.
Unfortunately, this is just a harbinger of the automation revolution to come. A ‘lights out’ warehouse is ultimately the goal, robots don’t need to “see” to pick and ship orders.
