Amazon packages may soon be delivered to your door by Amazon vans. Sayonara (kinda), UPS, FedEx and DHL!
Part of a new pilot program, Delivery Services Partners, Amazon is seeking increased control over package delivery using its own fleet of dedicated Amazon vans, leaving notorious middlemen UPS, FedEx, and other shippers out of the equation.
Users would benefit from increased visibility, using real-time map tracking, change address, and real-time driver interaction to get status updates on deliveries.
Delivering Competition
The program will also allow entrepreneurs to run their own last-mile delivery network using a fleet of up to 40 Amazon vans, responsible for picking up packages at one of more than 70 Amazon stations throughout the country and delivering it to customers on routes determined by algorithms.
The initial investment required by enterprising applicants runs as little as $10,000, with the vans only used to deliver Amazon packages.
"This is all about scaling cost-effectively," said Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of Amazon Worldwide Operations. "We are going to have to meet this growth, and it's outpacing the growth of our core providers."
At the moment, there are already 7,000 Amazon vans in the field.
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