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Walmart Is Turning Its Employees Into Delivery Drivers To Compete With Amazon (qz.com)
Walmart, which is aggressively investing in e-commerce to better compete with Amazon, is unveiling a new strategy: turning its army of 1.5 million US employees into delivery drivers. From a report: The tactic is being tested at three stores in New Jersey and Arkansas, and designed to shave costs out of the "last mile" of distribution, the most expensive part of getting goods to customers. Under the initiative, store employees will be given the option to deliver packages on their way home after work, in exchange for extra pay. They'll be given an app that allows them to input their routes, and an algorithm will plot the most efficient path. To take part, the employees will have to pass a background and vehicle check.
Wal-Mart could just hire a miniumum-wage delivery driver for each store and have deliveries all day long. If every pizza and Chinese restaurant can do it, so can Wal-Mart.
Curious if the employee has the flexibility to sign up for (or to reject) deliveries after each shift, and how much flexibility they have in time and direction.
When I am not going home after the shift, I shouldn't have to go out of my to deliver a package to my neighbor.
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Yeah I've seen a lot of people dismissing this but I think it's generally a pretty good idea. There are obvious issues with pay and insurance but i suspect many walmart employees will be happy to make their commute home be payable. Walmart will have to suitably figure out insurance because personal injury lawyers will jump at the chance to list them as a defendant when traffic incidents happen, they've got much more incentive to get that right than the local pizza franchise.
Their real strength in ecommerce should be that they have a massive presence in nearly every locality in the country, yet you can order something off their website and it'll ship with UPS 2-day from the other side of the country (despite sitting on a shelf 3 miles away from me). Their giant store footprint is really their singular advantage over Amazon, of course they should play to it.
other than their route home, what else will that app monitor about the employee. "Mr Smith we notice that you did not leave the bar until 23.30 last night ... please report to room 101 for an alcohol test"
Only one layer of excess oversized boxes...pikers.
I believe it's the Register that keeps a excessive packaging hall of shame. HP shipped a piece of paper with a license key in a typical software box. That was packaged in a more or less typical for Amazon shipping box (big enough for a large book), which was in turn packaged in a large cardboard box, big enough for a medium sized appliance like a microwave.
The whole thing was overnighted.
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The Walmart employees, of course. They have to pay for the damaged goods.
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is this an April Fools Joke? There's so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin? What about insurance? What if they hit somebody? What about mileage? There's no way Walmart will pay enough to account for that.
And what happens if they don't get enough "volunteers"? After all, the Walmart employees with Cars are the better off ones. I'm guessing pressure, hours cut, etc, etc.
Dear lord the working class is pooched. I mean, if it's come to this what next? I don't even have the words... We're no longer racing to the bottom, we've drilled through, struck oil and it's leaking into our ground water.
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Walmart does this, and they get vilified. some hip Silicon Valley app producing, VC milking shit show does it and they are avant garde.
I double checked for a /sarcasm tag but nope.
Of course w-mart will get an umbrella policy that covers it's drivers while they're on the clock delivering packages.
Of course Uber has a policy that covers its drivers while they're transporting a fare. But they wind up without coverage when they're on their way to pick up a fare. At best, Wal-Mart employees will wind up without coverage on their way home from delivering their last package.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Given Walmart's legendary addiction to corporate welfare, you can bet this program won't be genuinely voluntary for long. Ways will be found to "encourage" employees to participate that have nothing to do with the few bucks they'll throw at them for using their personal vehicle for commercial purposes.
And given what I've seen of Walmart employees who are virtually out on their feet by the end of a shift, it would probably be safer to hold a "Drunk Drivers 6000" through residential neighbourhoods than to have them looking for some random house after working a 12-hour split shift broken up over 18 hours.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.