These days “Getting There” doesn’t just mean moving yourself from point A to B, but the logistics of moving stuff from dozens of locations to your doorstep. And nobody does that better than Amazon.
Want a new pair of jeans?
Click once and they’re delivered the next day.
Need a new printer? Maybe a
couple of days because they’re still scarce, thanks to the home-office
explosion. Your favorite ointment out of
stock at CVS? Save yourself a trip,
click here and apply twice daily.
In his 2013 book “The
Everything Store” (yes, available
on Amazon), business writer Brad Stone chronicle the
early days of Jeff Bezos’ dream. But in
the intervening years the Amazon phenomenon has grown far beyond anything that even
Stone could have envisioned.
And now that Bezos has stepped
down as CEO it’s worth a moment to admire what his team
has built.
At the heart of the operation
is a logistics network that is a marvel of technology. So just how does a package go from your click
to your doorstep? Keep in mind that half
of all Amazon orders are for third-party sellers just racking their goods on
Amazon’s e-shelves.
Most Amazon orders are handled
at one of the company’s 110 US “Fulfillment Centers”, massive 800,000 to one
million square foot warehouses filled with robotics. So far there are two such centers in
Connecticut, Windsor and North Haven, with more in the works.
Merchandise arrives by the
pallet and gets offloaded, scanned and stored by some of the 1500 full time
employees at each site. Other, slightly
smaller centers house the really big stuff… furniture, lawn mowers and such.
As sales soared during the
pandemic, Amazon went on a hiring binge, bringing an additional quarter million
staffers onboard, many of them enticed by $1000 signing bonuses. Worldwide the company has 1.3 million
employees.
Much has been reported on the
working conditions in Amazon facilities… the long hours, intense pressure for
performance, etc. While we should keep
this in mind when we shop at Amazon, there seems no shortage of folks willing
to take these jobs, averaging about $40,000
a year in Connecticut, plus benefits.
These are the folks who, with
the help of Kiva robotics, pick your order, pack it up and SLAM it… scan,
label, apply and manifest. Then it rides
miles of conveyor belts and is sorted by destination zip code.
It used to be that Amazon
relied on FedEx, UPS and the postal service (for the last mile) to deliver your
order, supplemented by freelancers earning $20 an hour to make deliveries using
their own cars and vans.
But lately Connecticut has
seen Amazon roll out its own
fleet of dark grey Prime vans to handle many deliveries,
with plans to convert to an all-electric delivery fleet by 2040. The current vans are noticeable by their
back-up warning sounding like a quacking duck rather than the usual beep-beep.
Supporting this US network are
20,000 tractor trailer trucks and Amazon’s own cargo airline, Prime Air. That plane fleet has doubled
in size this year to 85 leased jets and Amazon even is
building its own $1.5 billion airport
hub in Kentucky.
So next time you click to
shop, think of the amazing logistics network that helps your package in
“Getting There”.
Posted with permission of
Hearst CT Media
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