What It's Like To Be An Amazon Flex Delivery Driver

This is the line for the

flex

ible Amazon

driver

s who line up every day like this. One-day shipping used to be a luxury now

delivery

driver

s are lining up outside this Amazon warehouse in the Bay Area to help make it the norm for 100 million Prime members. doubled the speed of core shipping from two days to one with the fastest speed now available on over 10 million products show your ID, they scan it and let you go Flexible Amazon drivers like Mont have our on-demand workers similar to driving for lyft or uber load packages and deliver them to your door are part of Amazon's solution to take control of the most expensive part of the shipping process last mile

delivery

we have been building for over 20 years to support this network that Over time we are getting faster and we knew we would start migrating to a one day service.

The big difference for us is how we get the product from our fulfillment center to that last mile location. So

what

's it like to hand it over to one of the best in the world? Most valuable companies we spoke to with

flex

ible drivers across the country to find out that you order and it may seem like magic when that Amazon package shows up at your door in just a day, but it's definitely not magic. Amazon spends tens of billions on shipping. each year and set aside eight hundred million in the second quarter of 2019 to transition to someday.

Most of that investment goes toward infrastructure and transportation costs associated with accelerating delivery to the millions of core customers they are about to begin experiencing. one day, when the new normal in the last quarter of 2018, Amazon's shipping costs increased by 23 percent, reaching a record of nine billion, until an item arrives at a warehouse near your home, it can be shipped in bulk, but then each package must be personally delivered to a different address which requires a lot of people and a lot of time. Amazon pays to outsource much of this to carriers like UPS and the US Postal Service who charge a fee and those fees end up increase in January, the post office increased its last mile shipping rate between nine and 12 percent depending on the size of the package the less Amazon can rely on these shipping giants the more it can control these costs it is building its own logistics network delivering 26% of its own packages last year for last mile delivery Amazon has small businesses some partners deliver 20,000 Amazon vans and in 2015 launched Amazon flex.

I have been driving for Amazon flex since about 2016 on and off. It started in November 2018 here in Lexington and that's when I started, so for the most part I like it if If you live closer to the delivery station, if you use Amazon Flex Ready, you'll see that there are a lot of people who are totally frustrated with the work, but they continue to do it. Amazon Flex is available in approximately 50 US cities, anyone older. 21 with a driver's license, car insurance and at least a midsize sedan can sign up after passing a basic background check. Drivers and areas with open spaces can begin picking up and delivering packages.

Amazon didn't reveal how many drivers have signed up or

what

percentage of its last-mile deliveries are made by flexible drivers compared to its delivery partners, but it told us the program is expanding, we're developing these small businesses from delivery service providers. and we have flex, which is our collective on-demand delivery piece, so we need all of that to meet the various types of delivery that we do in each of our geographies and I think you'll see an expansion on all fronts, where drivers They use the flexible app to check in for a block that ranges from three to six hours and then head out. to a warehouse where they discover how many boxes they have been assigned to deliver in that time period.

Amazon advertises that drivers earn between 18 and 25 hours per hour. Flexible drivers are responsible for their own vehicle costs, such as gas tolls and maintenance, on the day we drove. with Montes in the Bay Area, he was assigned a route 36 miles from the fulfillment center in rush-hour traffic with 45 packages that needed to be delivered in less than three hours. I would have won $67. I have to weigh what it cost me. get there and whether it's worth it or not, in this case it's not worth it, hey, it's 36 miles, I don't know if I can take it, I might have to miss it, okay, yeah, sorry, Dave will probably write you a ticket that It's like you know, yeah, okay, I appreciate it, although there's no money and I'm going to get a report.

I could get two of those before they deactivate me. Instead, Montez helped a friend on his route that day, something they do often and it takes two games. of hands to get the job done on time one thing you'll see is that we're constantly parking looking for parking, but when you have someone helping you, you just grab the box, have it ready, scan it, drop it, it just makes more sense. A friend made one hundred and five dollars delivering about forty-six packages in three and a half hours. These are like the good days that make you want to keep doing them, son, but unlike Lyft and Uber drivers who can simply turn off the app when we're taking a break.

Flex drivers are paid an hourly rate with a set time to complete deliveries. Many feel pressured not to stop. Do you feel like you have time to take a break? ​​Do you feel like you can go to the bathroom? No no. It's not like I try to go before my shift and then just hope I don't have to do it during my shift. Some drivers like Elbert have asked us for varying degrees of anonymity because they want to protect their privacy or their ability to continue working with Amazon. You've been there for an hour now because they're sending you somewhere, no one's sure I'm in LA traffic all the time, yeah, I have to turn in like twenty taxes for each power, justice is in my blood, so you know You feel anxious and stressed, but Flexible drivers we spoke to in less congested regions, from Arizona to Kentucky to New Jersey, said they are rarely assigned too many packages and often finish deliveries early, making the The pace is relaxed and the hourly pay is much higher because they are paid for the entire block. no matter how long it takes you, it's really easy many routes, in fact I finished early, so I get between 25 and 30 dollars an hour doing flex, just when it takes longer than the allotted number of hours to deliver flex, drivers can call Amazon. to request an income adjustment, although some have told us that it is not always approved whenever I feel overwhelmed and they are just not the people - upon completing three half hours within my block, I will simply call them at the end and tell them it is not finished by the time you can check it in my app and usually you know it works without problems, sometimes they compensate you and sometimes they wouldn't like anyone to really know.

It's like sending an email and hoping and praying that you get paid for most of your overtime. Flex drivers we talked to supplementing their income with other jobs like uber lyft post mates and doordash flex requires more labor, repeatedly getting in and out of their car and sifting through stacks of packages to find the right one, but it's attractive to some because You don't let strangers into your car nor are you rated on your performance when it comes to salary. Goober advertises that drivers can earn fifteen hundred dollars a week, and a study that analyzed data from 30,000 rideshare drivers in several U.S. markets showed that drivers earned an average of $1,865 per hour in 2018 before expenses. .

So how do Amazon Flex drivers compare to others? In general, it was a good experience. I think driving with Flex is more lucrative for the driver compared to almost anything similar. A lot of times I'm weighing the options if I take this Flex bar or if a lot of people make this decision about what they should do as far as what gig they should do tonight. everything is based on these conditions and past experiences, you barely make enough as it is and then given the cost, wear and tear on your vehicle and only a low salary and everything you need to make a living, Montez has had trouble finding a full time job.

I don't have a college degree and at 28 years old I still live at her parents' house to make ends meet. He mostly stopped driving for Amazon because he says he makes more doing temp jobs like private security or driving for Lyft and Uber, but sometimes Amazon Flex is just the most convenient job as bad as it is, sometimes you still want to have that option , so it's tough, it's a bittersweet relationship, maybe a lot of these people can't get a regular job, they're vulnerable and they're not making enough money to pay the bills. I feel like Amazon, you know, is definitely taking advantage of these people.

When flexible drivers accept a block, they do not know how many packages they will be assigned or how far they will need. driving until they've lined up at the warehouse, which is the time when they don't get paid just to know what you're going to get, would solve like 99% of the problems because you show up, you know it and you don't. You don't know where you're going You don't know how many boxes you have You don't know if they'll fit several drivers We spoke to Safety is the biggest concern Montes and other drivers told us that they have been assigned large loads of packages that barely fit in their cars every Once you fit them in they are stacked so high they reach the roof of your car and you can't see your back, rear mirrors you know you only see boxes so it's definitely not safe in a statement, Amazon says safety is ours priority number one.

We communicate with delivery partners about safety issues, including safe loading practices. Another problem: Amazon doesn't provide flexible drivers with any branded clothing to identify them. Rapper Ice-t tweeted about this last month saying that he almost shot a regular person making an Amazon delivery and Amazon responded on Twitter that they would send this to our logistics team for review. Jonathan in Connecticut told us about a similar experience while he was making the delivery. I stop at this house. I get to the front door and you know, this guy just comes running like, hey, what are you doing?

And he's talking so fast and it's like, you know, he was talking so fast and he wouldn't let me talk, so I had to scream. and I say: I'm with Amazon and I'm just delivering your package. He was thinking, you know I'm in Connecticut, you know I'm a Puerto Rican in a white man's yard and you know, who walks in there and shoots me. his face, ice and questions, you know, that was my fear after another delivery where he says a customer let his German shepherd charge him. Jonathan paid $45 out of his own pocket for a custom sweater on Etsy, it's insecure work, you know what I did.

It's safe for me to make myself visible and look more like an Amazon employee, but most of these people don't think so. I think the least Amazon could do is give us something that would make it a little safer. I've gotten a lot of mean looks from people because who is this guy? He is right in front of my driveway or he is parked in front of my house. He's just wearing a yellow vest. You don't even have to wear that vest. I just do it because at least I seem less suspicious to those who rely heavily on flexibility for income, the pressure is very high to finish one block of packages and move on to the next, sometimes I feel like I need to rush and other times I will have to go to the bathroom. very bad, but I'll have to put up with it because I'm not exactly in an area where there are bathrooms or shops nearby and sometimes I have to bend the rules of the road a little to be able to get back to where I was supposed to go, several drivers told us that the Flex app is part of the problem, that Amazon's navigation and app are not good, but they can be dangerous because they will try to send you the wrong way on a one-way street and some drivers told us, the way it works The app encourages distracted driving, unlike Lyft and Uber Zaps, which send new rides to drivers' phones automatically, the Flex app requires drivers to manually hit refresh to secure their next task, competition can be high and Blocks are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis so that drivers who want to make more money are constantly tapping on the Flex app even while driving.

If you want to get crashes then you have to tap that refresh button in the app almost constantly, but how do you do it? you're delivering, so encourage people to do it while driving. You're constantly on your phone while you're driving and that can get dangerous, but people have to, you know, make a livingSilly, they are always checking phones while people are there. desperate and you are looking for work while driving and inevitably this is please don't let it happen to me or anyone else yes this will cause collisions and could cost lives because people are taking the world's attention away.

While looking for work, other drivers told us they felt unsafe because routes are assigned without taking into account weather hazards or car type, such as once when Montez got stuck on a muddy road on a rainy day while helping in the route of a friend I called. the support and I said hey, this is what would happen, you know, can you help me? and they say no, you know, and how many boxes do you have left, and you know, can you finish your deliveries? I'm just thinking, wow, that's it. The first thing you asked me I called a tow truck I had to pay for that out of pocket because there are no benefits I ended up losing money that day and I still had to finish my deliveries in a statement Amazon said it provides delivery partners with 24 hour roadside support day, 7 days a week, if delivery partners have issues making a delivery, we work with them directly to resolve it.

Amazon is looking at several high-tech solutions to ease the burden on delivery drivers and reduce the cost of that last mile. delivery in early June Amazon announced its new autonomous delivery drone will be operational in a few months and has a one-year FAA permit to test it. We're building all-electric drones that can fly up to 15 miles and deliver packages weighing less than five pounds to customers in less than 30 minutes. Amazon also has patents for a giant flying warehouse and drones that can react to waving hands and screaming voices. Amazon also announced last month that it would pay full-time workers to quit if they helped with that expensive last-mile delivery program, which offers up to $10,000 for employees who want to leave the company and start their own delivery services. packages.

This could help Amazon increase its number of small business partners delivering that last mile along with flexible drivers. Early response is excellent. We give three months of salary as additional support. wheeled vans and vehicles for people who sign up for this and we make sure they have enough work to make it a viable business. It allows us to complement the capacity we have with our excellent carrier partners. More than 16,000 strategies have already taken supplements. Amazon is even testing a new curbside robot called Scout to help with that labor-intensive last-mile delivery, but until drones and robots take over that task, Amazon will continue to rely on a variety of people to bring us our packages in just one day.