Amazon Wants You To Start a Business To Deliver Its Packages (cnn.com) 222
If you have $10,000 and want to be your own boss, Amazon has a deal for you. From a report: Starting Thursday, you can apply to start your very own small business, delivering Amazon Prime packages in Amazon branded vans and uniforms. The company wants to help launch small businesses in the United States dedicated to taking its packages on the last step of their journey: from local Amazon sorting centers to the customers who ordered them. It announced the new program on Wednesday at a press event in Seattle.
It's the latest attempt by Amazon to gain greater control of the delivery network at the core of its Prime business, which ships 5 billion packages a year globally. [...] Amazon's new "Delivery Service Partners" and their staff members won't be employed by the tech company. The initial $10,000 costs will go to helping them start an independent business that has to begin with at least five delivery vans and ramp up to 20 vans over an undisclosed period of time.
It's the latest attempt by Amazon to gain greater control of the delivery network at the core of its Prime business, which ships 5 billion packages a year globally. [...] Amazon's new "Delivery Service Partners" and their staff members won't be employed by the tech company. The initial $10,000 costs will go to helping them start an independent business that has to begin with at least five delivery vans and ramp up to 20 vans over an undisclosed period of time.
Amazon wants you to go broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon wants you to take all the risk to get into a race to the bottom with other hopefuls in a competition to see who can deliver packages for Amazon for the least possible cost.
Make no mistake about it, Amazon will dole packages out to the lowest bidder, and the only ones who will make money are those who consider their time to be worthless, thus becoming ex-parte slaves like Uber drivers already are.
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> Make no mistake about it, Amazon will dole packages out to the lowest bidder
No they won't. That would require additional analysis and work on Amazon's part. What they will do instead is pay per piece at a set rate, and it's up to the companies to figure out how to make money on that. Much easier for Amazon.
Re:Amazon wants you to go broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. And $10k is just the start. You'll also be leasing 5 Amazon-branded vans. Your Amazon contract will say you can't use those vans to deliver packages for anyone else, so Amazon becomes your only customer, and you're fucked if Amazon takes their business to your competition. 5 vans also means you can't start slowly just with 1 van and yourself as the driver, you'll need to get into personnel management, planning etc. All the joys of company ownership.
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like the end of arlington road
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RTFA. the DO allow you to use the vans for other deliveries. sheesh.
FTA:
The partner companies can only deliver Amazon packages from the branded vans, but they're allowed to add their own non-Prime vehicles and pick up work for other companies.
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Re:mmmmNNooo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, he's complaining about the shift in usage of the world itself: liberalism. From an article on the matter: [mises.org]
Liberalism has become one of the most widely misused and abused words in the American political lexicon. It represents, some say, politically “progressive thought,” based on the goal of “social justice” through greater “distributive justice” for all. Others declare it represents moral relativism, political paternalism, governmental license, and just another word for “socialism.” Lost in all of this is that fact that historically “liberalism” originally meant, and continues to mean for some, individual freedom, private property, free enterprise and impartial rule of law under constitutionally limited government.
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Socialism is based around social ownership. Places like Norway and Iceland have strong privately-owned corporations, factor regulation, and product market deregulation. Basically, government. At the same time, they have strong government services and social insurances.
Democratic Socialism would be something like having all employees have equal voting share holding in all businesses, whereas private ownership requires you to buy shares. Credit unions are a democratic socialist type of institution, wit
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This is a franchise. Just like many other places you go to.
If it is profitable for the franchisee then they will go with it, otherwise they will not.
Uber, was intended to be a part-time job. This is a franchise, it is your own company, you have more options available to you, but being a franchise there are standard you need to meet. Just like a fast food franchise cannot sell their food at a different price, the Amazon Delivery Company cannot charge Amazon too much for shipping.
What amazon really is doing
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What amazon really is doing is transferring its risk.
FTFY. "Mitigating" implies that the risk diminishes, which isn't happening here - it's just being moved to effect someone else's pocketbook.
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What amazon really is doing is mitigating its risk.
Known to the trade as externalising the costs [wikipedia.org].
Fedex got sued for doing this to drivers your own (Score:2)
Fedex got sued for doing this to drivers your own boss?? no fedex has a lot of control and you have to buy / rent all of there stuff to work for them.
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That is the same as with any other Franchise.
However if you wanted to start a local delivery business, Doing this with Amazon at least means you will have a paying customer (Amazon) .
If you are clever and you want to deliver other things, you can just get a big magnet to put over the Amazon logo, and put yours on it. And just give your workers a change of shirt, or a vest to put over the shirt.
All that being said, Having Amazon as your only customer is probably really good for a small shipping company. Bein
Re:Transfering risk, not mitigating (Score:4, Interesting)
Aren't most franchises based on areas. Like I cant start a McDonalds franchise across the street from your established store because they don't allow that. Will Amazon provide any protection to people who buy into this franchise like limiting the number of them in a given metro area?
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No obligations (Score:2, Informative)
Amazon will dole packages out to the lowest bidder, and the only ones who will make money are those who consider their time to be worthless, thus becoming ex-parte slaves like Uber drivers already are.
"Slaves"? Really? Slave sort of implies you cannot quit and go do something else. Uber drivers aren't slaves either. Just because they are willing to working for crap wages doesn't mean they are obligated to continue to do so.
In reality Amazon will not be taking bids. They will set a flat rate (which will be aggressively cheap) and conditions to ensure service quality and it's up to the delivery company to make a profit. Honestly I have trouble seeing this working out well with high quality service bu
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Amazon also uses FedEx for two-day delivery. All of FedEx's drivers are independent contractors that own/lease their own vehicles. The question is whether Amazon's package load is high enough to cut out the middle man. It probably is.
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They don't have high-quality service now, so I don't think they really care. I've ended up randomly with probably a hundred bucks of random stuff at my house that was misdelivered to me instead of to p
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They don't have high-quality service now, so I don't think they really care. I've ended up randomly with probably a hundred bucks of random stuff at my house that was misdelivered to me instead of to people with a similar house number half a mile away.
They scan the barcode at the point of delivery and use GPS to confirm the address is correct. I haven't has a misdelivery in years.
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Unfortunately, that doesn't always work in practice. In my case, my street address is the same as the address where they were supposed to have delivered those packages. However, that street address is the address of a mobile home park with a thousand spaces, the space numbers are non-consecutive, and the space number they are trying to deliver to is half a mile away from where
Re:Amazon wants you to go broke (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they want to eliminate the "contractor" risk for themselves and pass it on to you! If you are forced to have a minimum of 5 trucks, you directly can't be an employee of Amazon... and your employees are (in theory) unable to sue Amazon for class status. By keeping it small, it also protects Amazon from saying labor abuses are widespread...
Saying all that... I have no idea how anyone could possibly break even at that business when paid less than $3/package for delivery. Even at $5/package would seem like a challenge to make money and cover all overhead costs. (The drivers themselves were already fsck'd.)
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If you can deliver an average of one package per minute, that's $360,000/year.
Five trucks, five drivers at $50k, five package routes, and centralized accounting and logistics (divide your overhead by five, just about). Your accounting costs will probably be $5,000, and probably double with five trucks (probably won't nearly double tbh but what the hell?). Your per-truck cost adds onto your per-employee cost--fuel, maintenance, etc.
$250,000 for employees (including yourself if you drive), $10k for bookk
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The statistics I have heard make it sound like they limit each driver to 100-120 packages per day, and you aren't allowing for van costs, which would be on the order of $20k per year. I can see ways of making money in specific areas with unique service plans that don't work well right now with the current system, but once you lose control of your package inventory per truck you don't have control of anything.
Re:Amazon wants you to go broke (Score:5, Informative)
I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare [theatlantic.com]
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Also gives Amazon the out to say "we don't pay shit, it's these other companies"
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Except that Amazon is asking YOU to create potentially unsustainable, low-paying jobs and PAY for the "privilege" of doing so, so that they don't have to claim responsibility when shits hit the fan in their direction.
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Ya, but then you got to spend all that on your employees, vans, etc.
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Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Plus i expect you'd need something like $3-4M in revenue to support that.
Not a horrible rate of return if the work is stable, but you seem like you'd be totally dependent on Amazon to keep the packages and growth coming and you'd really suffer if they slowed down a little.
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$300k/year on 100 employees is a razor thin margin for a small business. $3000 per employee per year? That's one mistake, one serious problem away from bankruptcy.
Re: Sure, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Translation : Amazon doesn't want to pay delivery (Score:5, Insightful)
Lost In Translation (Score:2)
Since Amazon already uses UPS and the post office today to deliver packages, how is this Amazon "avoiding" anything, other than having a more focused delivery service in some locations that is dedicated to providing good service to Amazon?
Re:Lost In Translation (Score:5, Informative)
Because these are designed to replace their use of UPS and the post office. I live in the suburbs, close enough to a major city that over the years Amazon deliveries have moved from UPS/USPS to primarily Amazon's delivery people (which are currently Uber-style "contractors") over the last few years. Amazon's delivery people are both obviously cheaper for them and fairly terrible at their job.
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Since Amazon already uses UPS and the post office today to deliver packages, how is this Amazon "avoiding" anything,
They are doing this in order to stop using UPS and the post office/
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Would it be better for Amazon to try and increase their costs, by dealing with these employment standards?
Re:Translation : Amazon doesn't want to pay delive (Score:5, Informative)
It is also a way for them to erode their dependence on big carriers (UPS, Fedex, USPS, etc.). The bigger you are, the harder it is to be pushed around. These small independent carriers will be at the mercy of Amazon feeding them a stream of business. Oh, and they will also squeeze the hell out of them, like they do their warehouse workers.
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That's...not really your own business. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you answer to a corporation and not your customers, it's a franchise.
It's basically Amazon Avon.
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If you answer to a corporation and not your customers, it's a franchise.
It's basically Amazon Avon.
Don't forget saturation. Might actually be a decent gig if you are located in a high density area with a lot of Amazon orders and you are the only one within 10-15 miles. But what's to prevent Amazon from setting up 2-3 other franchises, er... "partners", within that same 10-15 mile radius?
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Or FedEx Ground [buildagroundbiz.com].
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If you answer to a corporation and not your customers...
Amazon would be the customer in this case since they are now and still will be the ones paying the delivery company for the service.
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If you answer to a corporation and not your customers, it's a franchise.
It's basically Amazon Avon.
Amazon Survivor(TM) would be a more apt name. Most everybody will lose.
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"He who smelt it, dealt it."
It can't be any worse than what they do now (Score:5, Interesting)
I've ordered several things with promised same day delivery in downtown Seattle for work, and none of made it even next day. The worst was a microwave that took seven days. I talked to the Uber driver that delivered it, and he said it had been in the back of his Jeep since the day we ordered it. My boss was so pissed off about people getting angry with him since we didn't have a microwave that we stopped buying from Amazon completely.
Now, we pay employees mileage to drive to local stores if you can buy locally. We're spending a lot more time and money because of Amazon's terrible local delivery.
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I bought a small convection oven, and that took three days for delivery even though I live about 400 yards from their HQ in South Lake Union. Package was abused and two of the three knobs were broken. I tried to return it, but gave-up after a huge hassle since it was just $60. The Amazon driver also parked on top of flowers and a bush infront of my condo building. I got charged by the COA for that damage.
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Excuse me, paying prime is paying for shipping. The only reason we(wife and I) keep using the service is because we order that much crap that the S&H would be terrible. So if the person doesn't deliver in a reasonable time and this becomes normal for my "free" two day shipping to turn into "free" whenever it gets here shipping, I'll be better off dropping my prime membership and just paying for shipping.
Amazon doesn't want me dropping prime, especially since I will likely put more effort into my shoppin
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It's frustrating that so much of the gig economy is based around closed ecosystems. If you could coordinate uber, lyft, doordash, amazon, task rabbit and whatever else into a single platform where systems could try and find the best synergy for each employee then you could probably improve earnings, efficiency and pollution quite a bit.
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Software, but the company provides free oatmeal and microwave popcorn. People were upset since they went hungry.
First my fire tablet, now my entire livelyhood (Score:2)
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First First they they want want to to turn turn my my fire fire tablet tablet into into an an echo echo echo echo, and and now now they they want want me me to to change change careers careers and and become become an an echo echo echo echo for for them them? This This is is outrageous outrageous, I I will will not not stand stand for for this this, oooh oooh, 2 2 day day shipping shipping.
ftfy
They want? (Score:4, Informative)
Personally I want Slashdot to stop writing stupid headlines like some cheap tabloid rag. Especially since we now have two "Amazon wants" stories in a row.
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Amazon wants you to start a business to deliver its packages
Amazon wants you to turn your Fire tablet into a portable Echo
Next up:
Amazon wants you to start sending them your paychecks directly
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Next up: Amazon wants you to start sending them your paychecks directly
Don't give them ideas....
I can see it now. Set up direct deposit with Amazon to have that money credited directly to your account. Use Amazon pantry for grocery/household goods. Pay for Amazon video rentals/purchases. Pay your rent with new Amazon Rents (if you decide to move you can even order/purchase your new home/apartment online!). The only thing better than locking employees into the company town/store is locking in non-employees.
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This would make a great introduction for a parody of Logan's Run mixed with the style of Idiocracy and the concept of Fallout Shelter. All civilization collapses and the only people left are the ones in the Amazon Shelters.
So.... (Score:5, Informative)
I pay Amazon for the privilege of delivering their packages, under their rules, and I can only use their branded vans (which, no doubt, I have to pay for), and what a great deal, huh? And I'm not even an Amazon employee?
Okay, here's a slight problem with that.... FedEx Ground already lost that legal battle. They had "contractors" who had to wear FedEx branded uniforms, drive FedEx branded vans (which they had to pay for and were on the hook for all but the simplest maintenance), and could only deliver non-FedEx packages after they finished their deliveries for that day, but (and this is important), according to FedEx, they weren't employees.
The contractors sued, and won. The judge basically ruled that FedEx was treating them like employees when it benefited FedEx to do so, but for things like health care and 401(k), oh no, they're not employees.
The judge was not amused.
So, I don't see this going the way Amazon thinks it will.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is putting a small twist on it, by making it a minimum 5 man company instead of dealing with 1 man companies.
It's a smart scheme, but I hope the judges remain unamused.
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That's why Amazon wants you to buy 5 vans (at the minimum) and 5 sets of uniforms instead of just 1 van and 1 set of uniform. In other words, your delivery people don't need to be independent, they can be YOUR employees.
So if someone gets sued, you get sued, not Amazon. Or if someone goes belly up, you go belly up, not Amazon. In other word, they found a loophole around the FedEx dilemna.
Don't let companies do this (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're driving around with their branding and they set your hours, they're your boss. The pretence that the drivers are independent contractors is just an end run around labour regulations.
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Exactly. Except here Amazon tries to do it not by calling people "independent contractors", but "independent small business".
Thus, every interaction Amazon has would be between business to business, and it's up to your new small business to pay you and your taxes properly.
It's a clever workaround...
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It's no different from a subway franchise in that regard. Or really a fedex franchise.
You don't have a choice (Score:2)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The pretence that the drivers are independent contractors is just an end run around labour regulations.
Probably more like an end run around sales tax nexus. If these delivery businesses are based in states where Amazon doesn't have warehouses directly, then they still wouldn't have to collect and remit sales taxes for those customers.
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The pretence that the drivers are independent contractors is just an end run around labour regulations.
From TFA:
Drivers will be full-time workers instead of contractors, and Amazon will require business owners to give them paid time off and other benefits.
Gig-based package delivery? (Score:2, Informative)
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Amazon thought they were paying too much to FedEx and UPS (and probably USPS as well) for shipping, so they decided to hire their own drivers and "cut out the middle man". But it turns out that managing a delivery service is hard work, unless you want your delivery people to suck and your customers to constantly complain about it.
So now they're basically trying to lure unsuspecting people into subsidizing Amazon's delivery costs. I'm sure some desperate fools will fall for it...
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... I once had a package delivered by a gig-based delivery service, and it did not result in a good experience...
I forgot to add...
.
I only had that bad experience once because I stopped buying stuff from the online store that used that gig-based delivery service.
Is it really a good idea to only have 1 customer? (Score:2)
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Just run a parallel pot delivery service with the vans. Don't tell Amazon.
It's insane on its face. Nobody that signs up will be 'strictly complying' with the contract terms. Especially once Amazon sets up many of these services in all metro areas and starts making them bid on the deliveries.
I have an idea for Amazon... (Score:2)
They can use automated T-shirt cannons that automatically load and fire. The driver just does a slow drive-by, and fires the packages at the front door.
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Not sustainable (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm really beginning to seriously think that this whole culture of 'everything delivered to your door' just isn't sustainable -- and perhaps not healthy, either. People are lazy and fat enough as-is without there being more conveniences to give them more excuses to not get off the couch and move around
From a environmental perspective it's probably more sustainable having highly-optimized delivery routes than having people each drive their own vehicle out to Walmart. Also, if our idea of exercise is walking around Walmart, we're already f**ked.
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Just avoiding the employer health mandate (Score:3)
This is just a creative attempt to avoid providing health benefits or paying the $2-3K per employee for not doing so. In the end, it moves the cost of the health of most of these employees to other tax payers - in effect, providing a huge government subsidy to Amazon in the form of health care for the employees they require.
As long as the (essentially) franchises keep their employee count under 50, none of them will have to provide insurance. At the same time, Amazon will probably brag at how they are promoting small business development.
Employers should be required to pay the cost of living for the employees they require to do business and health is a critical part of that. If they don't, their profits are coming from the fact that the government is partially paying for the employees necessary to make those profits.
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Terrible business idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That works out to a profit margin (net income) of just $3000/yr per employee.
Most businesses have a net income per employee of tens of thousands of dollars [forbes.com] ($28k/yr average for the fortune 500), with the best ones pulling in well over $100,000/yr per employee [businessinsider.com]. Most of the companies with a net income per employee below $10,000/yr are huge corporations [seekingalpha.com] who gain economic stability from having 100,000+ employees (erratic performance by a single employee does not affect their bottom line much), and are able to leverage economies of scale to turn those meager profit margins into something worth doing.
If you take up Amazon's offer, you're basically dead meat. Especially since you're in the precarious position of only having a single customer, and have no leverage to negotiate prices - you either accept what Amazon says they'll pay you or they'll bankrupt you overnight. This is basically Amazon outsourcing the delivery business, where they take the lion's share of the profit for themselves, while offloading all the risk (fewer deliveries due to an economic downturn) onto the poor schmucks who took out loans to buy all those delivery vans and have to pay payroll and unemployment regardless of how poorly business goes.
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I was curious as to how much UPS makes per employee and it looks like for 2017 it was around $16,500 per employee at the very best. So the profit margins on package delivery already look pretty slim even when operating at the largest of scales, they have 454,000+ employees. This is definitely looking like a horrible idea for anyone looking to start their own business.
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Nice try, Amazon (Score:2)
I'm not falling for it. If I had $10,000, I'd buy an eight-ball and head to Vegas. Hit up the blackjack tables, maybe see a show. Go to the Palomino Club and try to catch a venereal disease. At least I'd have some good memories when it was over. Those poor dudes who deliver Amazon parcels to my house look miserable.
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Why are they making 1099's use uniforms? much less (Score:2)
Why are they making 1099's use uniforms? much less buy them? That should make them employees?
Pitting the labor force against itself..... (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of relying on existing methods of delivery, UPS, USPS, FedEx, they want to get individuals involved. What that really means is that reasonably well paying jobs with delivery companies decrease in number, while poor schmucks in debt to Amazon increase.
This is happening throughout the US labor landscape. It's one of the reasons labor unions came into existence way back when. Unfortunately "union" is now treated as an expletive, and the very people that unions can help most are the ones who object to them most strongly.
But don't forget that UPS drivers are Teamsters, and won't take kindly to a bunch of amateurs taking a bite out of their livelihoods.
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But don't forget that UPS drivers are Teamsters, and won't take kindly to a bunch of amateurs taking a bite out of their livelihoods.
Teamsters do not mess around. Amazon is powerful, but so are the Teamsters.
A week-long strike of Amazon deliveries would put a dent in Amazon's reputation for already bad customer service and unfulfilled promises of next-day delivery, etc.
Pay money to get a shitty job? (Score:2)
If I had $10,000 lying around, I would not purchase an Amazon delivery franchise just to get a job. That would be stupid.
If I did it, Amazon would be my boss. Amazon is an extremely shitty boss that screws everyone harder the loser-down the totem pole they are.
Amazon should simply contract with existing providers. If those providers do not want to expand, then Amazon has to do something. Externalizing all of the risk of a business venture, while being shackled to Amazon Corporate's whims is a sickening
They Need A Strategy For The Great Plains (Score:2)
But not door-door delivery.
After driving through the Great Plains this past year, where small towns (and I mean small towns) are scattered over vast areas, and where there are many small towns that got so small they closed up shop, and hearing about the problems of getting goods delivered out there, I thought that a good strategy for a behemoth like Amazon that wants to Sell Everything to Everyone would be to set up a system of delivery hubs across the plains.
Buy up abandoned buildings in abandoned (or near
Want, want want. (Score:2)
Yeah, well Amazon wants a lot of things.
Anyone remember when they were just an online bookstore?
Mind you we at /. were probably too busy laughing at the Iraqi Information Minister at that time.
Be your own boss (Score:2)
If you have $10,000 and want to be your own boss, Amazon has a deal for you.
Be your own boss while you are an Amazon contractor? Who believe such a bad joke?
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Well, what did you expect? You're the one who ordered a sack of bricks from Amazon!
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Can they really afford it? I mean, they're already replacing warehouse workers with expensive robots just to stay profitable!
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Maybe that profit is on top of your salary that you pay yourself, but I doubt that.
McDonald's has some legal issues franchisees. (Score:2)
McDonald's has some legal issues with the level of control over the franchisees. So this seems like it will get to the same point.
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"I wonder if this is a cheap shot at Trump."
I disagree. I'd call it an expensive shot.