Before Amazon Prime was launched in 2005, one-day shipping was a luxury for all. However, at the present time, it has become the standard shipping speed for more than 100 million Amazon Prime customers. The one-day delivery of Amazon is already available for more than ten million products. Amazon has changed the game of delivering its products to customers. They try to ship the product as smoothly and efficiently as they bring up the expectations of the people. However, delivering products in one day is not an easy job and a lot of hustle goes behind preparing every single Amazon box.
How Amazon Makes One-Day Shipping Happen?
Amazon spends billions of money on their shipping service to meet the expectation of the customers for a first-day delivery. In 2019, Amazon created a budget of $800 million to make one-day delivery the norm. Most of the expenditure goes into building the infrastructure and meeting the transportation cost.
Amazon has decided to cut the cost of it by actively participating in its own shipping industry by owning 50 airplanes, 300 semi-trucks, and 20,000 delivery vans. The investment is worthy for Amazon as it aims to satisfy its users. It ensures that Amazon Prime customers for every bit of penny that they are spending.
It is a myth that the package of the journey starts after you place the order. In reality, its journey starts even before an order is placed. Most of the products which are sold on Amazon are that of third-party. Sometimes, Amazon prefers to list its own products through its own brand or by buying products from a third party.
Most of these products once bought or created by Amazon are collected in a warehouse ready to be shipped immediately. On the other hand, there are also products listed which when purchased are directly shipped from the third party through either Amazon courier service or other professional courier services like Saia and XpressBees. After an order is placed, the item is picked from its respective warehouse, packaged, and shipped with the help of warehouse workers and robots. The robots have proved to be very handy in the warehouses of Amazon.
In fact, Amazon purchased a robot company to meet its requirement. After the item is packaged, they are shipped to different parts of the world, both at the international and domestic level depending on where the items need to be shipped. Once the item reaches a warehouse near the delivery destination, it is picked up by a delivery person. The last stage of the delivery is the most expensive in the entire transportation cost. Amazon launched its Amazon Flex to cut this cost.
Amazon Is Using High-Tech Solutions For Last-Mile Delivery
The last-mile delivery is so expensive that Amazon started looking for high-tech solutions to fulfill its last-mile delivery. A few years ago, it worked on electric drones for delivering packages.
In addition to that, Amazon has also patented the idea of creating a big flying warehouse and drones to deliver the package. Further, it is working on a robot called Scout which works on the sidewalk to bring packages of the customers at the door. All this work requires plenty of research and development.
Amazon Is All About Number
The effort that goes behind delivering a package from the warehouse to the delivery door is extremely high. As a result, the working pressure in Amazon warehouses is extremely high now. The working condition of the Amazon warehouse has been criticized highly because of its overwhelming nature to a degree such that many workers while working in the warehouse prefer to avoid washroom breaks to save time and fulfill their orders to avoid getting fired due to reduced productivity. The working condition in the fulfillment center is comparatively better than the Amazon warehouse.
Even though Amazon is improving its safety training and investment in safety, it is not enough for its workers. As a result, numerous Amazon workers have protested from time to time in different places of the globe for improving their working conditions. Even though Amazon aims to keep its customers happy and satisfied, the same cannot be said for the workers of Amazon.
