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Amazon Wants You To Start a Business To Deliver Its Packages (cnn.com)
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 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.
This really just comes off as an effort to avoid dealing with employment standards for delivery people...
If you answer to a corporation and not your customers, it's a franchise.
It's basically Amazon Avon.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
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.
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?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First they want to turn my fire tablet into an echo, and now they want me to change careers and become an echo for them? This is outrageous, I will not stand for this, oooh, 2 day shipping.
Do you Gentoo!?
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.
And the Federal regulation of delivery companies that operate across state lines.
thus becoming ex-parte slaves like Uber drivers already are.
Yeah but at least the income drip is steadier and more reliable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Would it be better for Amazon to try and increase their costs, by dealing with these employment standards?
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.
like a sack of bricks is a requirement for this work
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.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
They can afford to employ its own workers and vans.
Yes
Good luck with that...
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.
"The business owners will be able to make as much as $300,000 a year in profit running a full-sized fleet of 40 vans and managing 100 employees, according to Amazon. They'll be plugged into Amazon's software, which will determine where the drivers go."
Manage and maintain 40 vans, employ 100 people and the over head that goes with it and all you get is $300k a year?
No thanks. Not interested. FedEx, UPS, USPS have earned my respect for the quality of their delivery. I have little confidence in Amazon digging up someone who wants to deliver packages. I once had a package delivered by a gig-based delivery service, and it did not result in a good experience. http://nymag.com/selectall/201...
... more crappy amazon delivery services
If you only have one customer, you have no leverage. You're an employee with none of the benefits of being an employee. Ideally no customer should be more than a 3rd of your business, to reduce the risk of them taking that business away.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEP-FhFGmA
So Amazon is going to shed its jobs making other people assume their business risks... How nobody saw that comming?
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 but maybe they'll figure it out.
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.
Yep it would, if many citizens promised Bezos a bullet-in-the-head for slave-labor behavior. Violence truly quickens the mind. Kinda like Uber-beavers, removing a living-wage from Taxi drivers. Where is the mafia when we really need them.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not in this case. They want you to be employing other people. You start with at least 5 delivery vans that has to be ramped up to 20 over a set time period (details probably negotiated?) and would be managing employees. You (or rather your new company) would have to provide wages and benefits for your employees.
So basically, what Amazon appears to be going for is a franchise-type scenario.
if you live in the blasted out ruins of the rust belt. You take whatever work you can to get enough money for food and rent (well, food _or_ rent). Folks don't realize how bad it is in large swaths of American. We're just shy of a second world country. Maybe 1.5?
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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, and also more excuses to not interact with their fellow human beings. I think many of the social problems we're having these days are exacerbated by people being more and more socially-avoidant, and their fellow human beings becoming more and more an abstraction instead of fully 'three-dimensional' beings.
I would like Amazon let me choose who delivers my packages. For my area, UPS is only compelent delivery company in my area. I would gladly pay extra to let me deliver my packages rather than Fedex or USPS.
Personalized just for you.
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.
Also known as, 'We can no longer exploit the USPS, so we are recruiting dumbasses like you for exploitation!'
No thanks, Jeff!
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 ($28k/yr average for the fortune 500), with the best ones pulling in well over $100,000/yr per employee. Most of the companies with a net income per employee below $10,000/yr are huge corporations 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.
A large company is attempting to exploit relaxed rules for small businesses.
This will work cheaply for Amazon until it doesn't, then they'll move on to the next scheme. Meanwhile, the "independent businesses" that are clients of Amazon will be screwed.
I wonder if this is a cheap shot at Trump. You(Trump) make it more expensive for me(Brezos) I will put the hurt on the Postal Service.
At least in some states, I predict that they will run afoul of independent contractor v. employee rules. That said, there is a lot of this sort of thing in the trucking business.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Amazon is transfering risk, not mitigating it. You eat ALL of the risk. You can't use the vans to deliver other things. You can't use the employees to deliver other things, unless your drivers change. You eat all of the liability, and you get screwed if the market changes. At best, you luck into a market with no competition and get some positive cashflow. Most likely, you get some "profit" in the tax value of the depreciation of the vehicles. Your only leverage is the "fuck you" right before pickup, if you have any at all.
That's all that's required to start a franchise with them.
If you think $10 K is going to get you anywhere near that, you're a fool.
Once again, a large multinational is 'innovating' by offloading costs to unsuspecting chumps who will do the work, take all the risk, and likely lose their shirts.
I think you'd have to be a fool to think a $10K investment is going to get you anywhere near 5 vans ramping up to 20.
I predict the suckers Amazon signs up for this will be the getting pretty royally screwed over.
Once you're a business, you're a Golden Boy to Congress and the Supreme Court. They will, ahem, "service" you royally.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Liberal ideology is personal freedom which includes both economic and moral. Read Adam Smith and Mill.
What you are talking about is called: Socialism.
br No word stealing, ok comrades ?
Why are they making 1099's use uniforms? much less buy them? That should make them employees?
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.
Amazon delivering packages to the local USPS office, and then the mailman deliver the package the next day, seems like the cheap way to deliver packages, albeit slowly. Even, if Amazon has to loan USPS a bigger truck.
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.
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.
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 proposition from a sick mind.
Yup, this is exactly it. Many employment regulations are waived for small employers. So if they just contract out to a lot of small employers, they think they can save money by avoiding those regulations. Thus, this is all about exploiting people to shave a little bit more money off the top.
This is kinda already happening in San Francisco, and following Amazon's usual practice for hammering in concrete time constraints, the delivery employees/contractors will just dump your package on the street next to a sleeping homeless man, in front of your place without even bothering to ring the doorbell. This is essentially a way to outsource the dumping of packages into the trash methodology to limit their liability.
this. And it won't be "cool. Go for it!".
In the white house.
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 nearly so) towns, and convert them into the equivalent of post office boxes for packages, with locking storage. With web enabled smart locks the locals would not need dedicated containers, but would be notified which container had their stuff, and they would be able to unlock it to retrieve it.
An additional iteration would be along the lines of the TFA, allowing other locals to sign up for delivering to their neighbors.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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?
I can vouch for the "let's see who can do it for the cheapest cost" mentioned above... Here in Canada, at least in Quebec, their deliveries are handled by InterCom (or is it IntelCom?). Basically, the drivers are usually freshly arrived immigrants that barely speak French or English, very happy to have landed a job with a nice pay for the training... at the end of which they sign a contract they barely understand where they now deliver for Amazon with their own vehicle, pay their own gas, and are paid per-delivery at a ridiculous rate that really should be illegal. Actually, it IS well under our equally ridiculous minimum wage, but they're self-employed so InterCom can get away with it. This is why those poor drivers will leave your goddamn package by your front door, god help you if like me that front down is downtown in front of a shady boulevard, they have to deliver as many as possible as fast as possible to, somehow, make it profitable. I don't recall the exact amount per package, but it was something that didn't make any sense, in terms of making it profitable. InterCom is located right by the Montreal airport... So yeah, my most heartfelt sympathies for anyone that unfortunately ends up working for Amazon, anywhere in the chain.
They still do the same things but now (technically) we get paid to wear their uniforms and put their logos on our trucks. We still have have to buy the trucks and uniforms. All of the expenses are on us. It’s just legal hocus pocus. Break it out in to a line on an invoice and viola: it’s a negotiated contract! Don’t want to participate in the “Brand Recognition Program?” That’s cool, just don’t expect to make any money. It’s a bunch of crap. We’re still employees.
Honestly though it’s not all bad. I’ve been successful at it for over a decade now. I started out by myself. 60 hour work weeks, became a self trained mechanic, almost lost my marriage. Typical entrepreneur type stuff. I have a fleet and crew of great employees now. I haven’t delivered a package in years. I’ve made some good cash, not great, but it’s been enough to jump start some other investments and ventures.
Amazon looks a little different. For example, you lease the trucks from them. FedEx is the opposite. I suppose that takes a good deal of pressure off the driver/contractor but at a cost that some people might be able to otherwise mititgate if given a chance.
I'm sick and tired of hearing about people bitching over things like cost of living and the "gig economy". There are some jobs you *SHOULD NOT DO LONG TERM*. There are some places it does not make sense to live from a cost of living vs wage ratio. If you don't work there you won't get paid shit. It's nobody else's fault if you invest in a stupid business model and go broke or take up a relationship with Amazon that results in a bad deal. What is great about a free market is you can go try something else. At the same time nobody owes you anything. If you go to college for underwater basket weaving you only have yourself to blame. On the other hand I will say nobody should have supported the government's redistribution of wealth schemes because it has led to absurd tuition costs and kids picking majors they 'like' or are easy rather than majors that will lead them to good paying jobs. Ultimately the government schools funded by stolen money have failed and we should simply eliminate them. It'll force people to wake up and learn to do for themselves what government never really could afford to do in the first place or do well for that matter. You can only steal other people's money up to a point. After which your economy fails.
Don't forget the tabloid headline today about an "AI ROBOT ON THE SPACE STATION" and "MICROSOFT MAKES MINOR CHANGE TO SOMETHING NO ONE CARES ABOUT".
You're not an employee of them so you have zero rights and whatever contract your "independent company" signs with them is undoubtedly so lopsided and inequitable that it isn't even funny. And because Amazon are basically evil, they'll probably oversaturate the market with more drivers than necessary just so they can stiff drivers on bonuses and game the system in other ways.
Tech companies are über liberal, constantly railing against the evil conservative capitalists. However, your 'disruptive' 'gig-economy' is arguably much more abusive and exploitative than most real-world corporations.
You people are not just as sociopathic, you are more sociopathic than the conservatives -- at least the conservatives are self-aware.
I'm not free so long as someone controls my access to food, shelter, health care and education. You see it as "distributive justice" but that's not correct. The goal of progressives isn't justice (funny word that, plenty loaded). The goal is to have a world where nobody's too poor to live. We're not there. By all accounts 45000 Americans die for lack of health care ever year (preventable diseases left untreated).
That goal in turn leads to real freedom. Real freedom is being able to say 'no' when you boss tries to screw you and not dying of starvation or a preventable heart attack as a result.
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