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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.
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.
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.
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.
I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare