Is Amazon Prime Starting Up Its Own Delivery Service

Amazon Has a Business concern Proposition for You: Deliver Its Packages

Applicants accepted into Amazon's new start-up delivery program will get access to Amazon-branded vehicles and uniforms like these.

Credit... Kyle Johnson for The New York Times

June 28, 2018

SEATTLE — Amazon has more than 100 warehouses. It has a fleet of trucks, and even its ain airplanes. Now, in another try to help become its millions of packages to shoppers faster, it wants to build an regular army of delivery people, also.

The company appear Thursday a new program aimed at helping people start their ain businesses delivering packages for Amazon.

For a minimum investment of $ten,000, people in the Us will be able to open and manage their own delivery service handling Amazon packages. Although the couriers will not be employees of the company, they'll go access to Amazon-branded vehicles, uniforms and more.

By the company'southward calculations, an owner could earn every bit much equally $300,000 a twelvemonth in turn a profit by operating a fleet of up to 40 vehicles.

The program is a potential solution to a growing problem Amazon faces as it handles an ever-increasing number of packages for customers all across the country: How to apace get packages from its diverse package-sorting centers to people's doorsteps.

Only the kickoff-up service is certain to raise questions nearly whether it could claiming — or even replace — some of the work currently washed by Amazon's partners, including United Parcel Service and the United States Postal service.

[ Read almost how Amazon has shifted away from being an impartial, may-the-best-product-win distribution partner to being a direct competitor to vendors.]

Amazon's business ties with the Mail service have come under considerable scrutiny in recent months. President Trump has argued on Twitter that Amazon's understanding with the Mail, which sets the amount Amazon pays the agency, was costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

"I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Function massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy," Mr. Trump wrote in a tweet in April.

While the details backside the agreement are not public, bachelor testify suggests the opposite: that Amazon's business organisation has been a boon to the mail function. Some electric current and former White House officials have said that Mr. Trump sometimes blends Amazon with The Washington Post, which has covered his assistants aggressively. The Post is owned past Amazon'due south founder, Jeff Bezos.

In mid-April, President Trump abruptly issued an executive gild demanding an evaluation of the Postal Service'south finances. The order did non mention Amazon, but it was articulate that he would like for the console to substantiate his claims that the financial arrangement betwixt the Postal service and Amazon, its biggest shipper of packages, is a coin loser.

Executives at Amazon dismissed whatever link between the new delivery program and Mr. Trump's Twitter attacks well-nigh its understanding with the post office.

"This doesn't play into that debate at all," Dave Clark, Amazon'southward senior vice president of worldwide operations, said in an interview Wednesday afternoon at the Admiral'due south House, a historic landmark belongings overlooking Elliott Bay in Seattle.

Mr. Clark said his job was to think five to 15 years down the road about Amazon's needs and that the new delivery program was designed to come across futurity growth and chapters demands. He added that Amazon would continue to use all of its partners, including the Mail, to become packages to its customers.

Amazon has been testing a number of programs that could replace or reduce its reliance on its delivery partners. This year, for instance, information technology plans to test a new service in which company couriers would selection upward products from businesses that sell goods through Amazon and deliver that merchandise to its warehouses. Currently, that work is washed by UPS, FedEx and other companies.

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Credit... Kyle Johnson for The New York Times

[Read well-nigh how Amazon's by actions accept led to stock sell-offs for a wide range of companies .]

The new plan is also separate from Amazon Flex, which pays individuals $18 to $25 an hour to evangelize packages from their ain vehicle.

Under the programme, individuals volition not be employees or fifty-fifty independent contractors of Amazon, merely rather, exist owners of their businesses, contracted with Amazon to evangelize packages. Amazon said its vehicles could be used to evangelize packages only from the company, not its competitors.

The programme will start in more two dozen states, many of them forth the coasts. But company executives encouraged interested individuals to sign up even if their city or region wasn't currently listed, because Amazon expects the program to grow.

Amazon hoped in the next 12 to 18 months to accept hundreds of people sign up, calling them delivery service partners. If the service is successful, it would well-nigh likely be extended to other countries, Mr. Clark said.

And in a bid to concenter the nation's armed forces veterans to the program, Amazon is offering $10,000 reimbursements for qualified candidates to beginning their own businesses.

All of those who are accepted into the kickoff-upwardly program will get access to a variety of discounts Amazon has negotiated on their behalf, including the Amazon-branded vehicles, equally well as fuel, insurance coverage and more, executives said.

Ane of Amazon's examination participants in its new offering, Olaoluwa Abimbola, said that subsequently arriving from Nigeria, he spent years working at a desk job and, more than recently, driving for Amazon Flex. At present, he said, he was excited to be running his own company, which has 40 full- and part-fourth dimension employees.

"This ways the world to me," Mr. Abimbola said in front of a greyness Amazon Prime truck behind the Admiral'southward Business firm. "This opportunity provides a time to come for my family, for my daughters. I'm living my dream and having the time of my life."