All right. We're loaded up
and ready to go. For the 275,000 drivers
dropping off 10 million packages a day around the
world, delivering for Amazon is a lot of work. I've been tired, exhausted,
long days. The expectation is just go,
go, go, go, go at your own cost. But a lot has changed since
drivers in 2021 told us about unrealistic
workloads, peeing in bottles, dog bites and
error-prone routing software. We're checked in. We're
ready to go. Got our little key fob. For some drivers, it's
changed a lot. Now that 1,000+ electric
Rivian vans are on the roads. Heated steering wheel is
amazing. This little guy is cool. It's like the 360 view. So far, so good. We talked to drivers of the
old vans and new and went to Boston to see firsthand all
the new tech Amazon says is maximizing safety and
efficiency for a better driver experience. One feature I really like is
this big ole light bar that goes all the way around the
back. In 2019, Jeff Bezos
announced Amazon purchased 100,000 vans from
California-based electric vehicle maker Rivian. It's one step toward
Amazon's ambitious promise of net-zero carbon
emissions by 2040. Amazon started delivering
with them in July. Now it says they're in
100+ cities like Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Las
Vegas, Nashville and New York. This windshield is
absolutely massive. Some drivers voiced early
concerns about range, but Amazon says at up to 150
miles, it's not an issue. Now, Amazon's added
thousands of charging stations at delivery hubs. So this one's charging right
now. But here's the craziest
part. Are you ready? Look at all
those chargers. Rivian has faced some recent
challenges, cutting back 2022 production amid supply
chain and assembly line issues. Its stock fell so
sharply that Amazon recorded a $3.9 billion loss on its
Rivian holdings in Q2 last year. And some drivers are
worried about the inconvenience and wait time
for maintenance, which has to happen at official
Rivian service centers or by a Rivian mobile service
team. I was waiting for this
moment. Rivian truck. Rivian van. Still, Amazon says it
expects 100,000 Rivian vans on the road by 2030,
although that's pushed back from Bezos' original pledge
to have them all on the road by 2024. For now, most drivers are
still in 110,000 Amazon-branded gas-powered
vehicles, primarily Ford Transits, Mercedes
Sprinters, and Ram ProMasters. Amazon wouldn't
share how it determines which of its 3,500 delivery
service partners, or DSPs, get Rivian vans first. Amazon's been using these
third-party contractors to deliver its packages since
2018, allowing it to cut back its reliance on UPS
and the U.S. Postal Service. Here's how
it works. The DSP is the employer of
the drivers, responsible for the liabilities of the road
and the costs of hiring, benefits and overtime pay. And they lease the custom
vehicles from Amazon. Amazon covers the fuel and
installs charging stations for electric vehicles and
offers discounts to the DSP on things like insurance,
uniforms and package scanners known as rabbits. In the four years since
Amazon launched the program, it says DSP owners have
generated $26 billion in revenue and now operate in
15 countries, including Saudi Arabia, India,
Brazil, Canada and all over Europe. It's very easy to get in and
out with all of the different handles to hold
on to. Julieta Dennis launched her
DSP, called Kangaroo Direct, in Baltimore in 2019. She employs 75 drivers and
leases more than 50 vans from Amazon. Fifteen of
them are Rivians. Because they're so new and a
lot of the drivers don't really know what to expect
from them, some of them have been hesitant. But the moment they get in
there and have their first experience, that's the van
that they want to drive. The Rivian vans are small
enough that they don't require a special license
to drive, although Amazon provides its own training
to drivers before they can get behind the wheel. So this is where all the
lovely cargo goes. We have two shelves on both
sides to allow for more space. And then the lights
at the top: very innovative to help us see the packages
and address a lot easier, especially at nighttime. Brandi Monroe has been
delivering for Dennis's Baltimore DSP for two
years. She says the new vans make
her job faster and easier. The van has a 360 view of
all sides of the van. Also on the inside, it has
a route laid out for you right on the tablet. And then there's AC seats
and heated steering wheel. So that's great. Former driver B.J. Natividad, who goes by
Avionyx on YouTube, says his non-electric van could get
very cramped. I remember one time I had 23
or 24 bags and over 40 oversize packages. I had to be able to figure
out how to stuff that all in there within the 15 minutes
that they give us. When designing the vans,
Amazon asked for input from drivers about what needed
to be better. Now they're filled with
features for comfort and boosted productivity. In the back here the shelves
actually fold up and down, and there's still plenty of
space to walk. The Rivian vans have at
least 100 more cubic feet than the Sprinter and up to
double the cargo space of the Transit vans Natividad
drove in Las Vegas until he left in July. More space to
better organize means faster deliveries while on route
and room for more packages. The bulkhead is automatic. As soon as the vehicle is
placed in park, it automatically opens. So that helps to get like
easy access to the packages in and out of the van. Also, when you leave the
van and you walk away a few feet, it automatically
closes. We did a lot of deliveries
as a test because as a woman, I want to make sure
that the seats are comfortable for me and that
my legs could reach the pedals, I can see over the
steering wheel. Mai Le's team at Amazon
built out the Rivian's center console and its
integrated software. When we start to notice that
you're slowing down, that means that we can tell
you're getting near to your destination. The map begins
to zoom in, so you begin to find where's your delivery
location, which building and where parking could be. The new vans have keyless
entry and automatically lock when the driver is 15 feet
away and unlock as the driver approaches. Above all else, Amazon says
it's made changes to make the delivery job safer. A ProPublica report found
Amazon's contract drivers were involved in more than
60 serious crashes from 2015 to 2019, at least ten of
which were fatal. Now Amazon's put cameras
and sensors all over the new Rivian vans, which enable
warnings and lane-assist technology that
autocorrects if the vehicle veers out of the lane. The steering wheel just kind
of shaking when you get too close to something, the
automatic braking that it has, the 360 bird's eye
view just to be able to see everything around the van. There's just so many
features that would really help cut back on some of
those incidental accidents. It's crazy. All the alarms like, look,
there's a person right there and it just let me know. There's an automatic parking
brake, rollaway detection and driver-facing cameras
inside. Now, Amazon can issue
warnings about unsafe driving practices as they
happen. Camera, camera. Netradyne camera, which has
always been there. Beryl Tomay helps run the
technology side of last mile delivery for Amazon. The in-vehicle safety
technology we have watches for poor safety behaviors
like distracted driving, seatbelts not being
fastened, running stop signs, traffic lights. We've seen over the past
year a reduction of 80% to 95% in these events when
we've warned drivers real-time. But the really
game changing results that we've seen have been almost
a 50% reduction in accidents. DSP owners like Dennis get
real-time alerts if their drivers exhibit patterns of
unsafe behavior. You know, something with a
seatbelt or just something, something flags, then our
team will contact the driver and make sure that that's
coached on and taken care of and figured out, like what
actually happened. Some drivers told us the
feeling of constant surveillance is unsettling. Dennis says it's not an
issue for her drivers. No one's complained to you
about that? None of your drivers? Never. Never. There's no sound ever being
recorded. There's no camera recording
if the driver's not driving and there's a privacy mode. Amazon says privacy mode
means the cabin-facing camera switches off both
when the ignition is off and if the vehicle is
stationary for more than 30 seconds, and that there's
no live video feed available to anyone. One of the things everyone
was so concerned about was that there would be a
camera back here in the cargo area. There's nothing in there. Another concern drivers told
us about is aggressive dogs. Customers out there, please
restrain your dogs when you know a package is coming. Okay? Please keep them
inside. Don't leave them just
outside. One Amazon driver in
Missouri was found dead in October, allegedly after a
dog attack. Now Amazon is working to
increase notifications to both customers and drivers. One of the other things that
we're building and we're going to be launching is
the in-app for drivers so that they can actually then
tag inside the app that, hey, this place has a pet
so that in the future any other drivers that come to
this house now knows that, oh, there's a pet here. Other Amazon drivers have
been carjacked. Amazon says the keyless
system will help safely prevent theft. The EDV logic will allow the
van to drive away without the key for a short period
of time, thus keeping the driver out of harm's way
and eventually turning off the vehicle once beyond a
certain range. Providing drivers with more
efficient and better detailed routes could
improve safety, too. People are running through
stop signs, running through yellow lights. Everybody I
knew was buckling their seatbelt behind their backs
because the time it took just to buckle your
seatbelt, unbuckle your seatbelt every time was
enough time to get you behind schedule. Drivers in 2021 told us that
when they cut corners, like leaving their seatbelt off
or running stop signs, it was often because they were
rushing to finish their deliveries after losing
time because Amazon's routing software made a
mistake, like not recognizing a closed road
or gated community. Blocked. Can't get in. Can't get in. Gate. Gate. Turn left to enter a
private road. Amazon listened. It's been adding a huge
amount of detail to driver maps using information from
16 third-party map vendors and machine learning models
informed by satellite driver feedback and other sources,
like a new in-vehicle data collection system called
Fleet Edge. In a few thousand vans now,
Fleet Edge collects real-time data from a
street-view camera and GPS device during a driver's
route. Due to Fleet Edge, we've
added over 120,000 new street signs to Amazon's
mapping system. The accuracy of GPS
locations has increased by over two-and-a-half times
in our test areas, improving navigation safety by
announcing upcoming turns sooner. Tomay says by the end of
2022, Amazon added 325,000 new stop signs, 180,000
traffic signals and more. We also added points of
interest, such as coffee shops and restrooms so
drivers can find a spot to take a break within 5
minutes of a stop for about 95% of cases in metro
areas. There's nothing more clutch
than showing up to your first stop, finding one of
these. Let's go. In 2021, Amazon had to
apologize for dismissing claims that drivers were
urinating in bottles as a result of demanding
delivery schedules. And then as soon as I opened
the van, you know, I'm looking around, I see a
bottle of urine. I'm like, oh, I'm not
touching this. Natividad started delivering
for Amazon in 2021 when the pandemic dried up his gigs
as a full-time DJ. You're getting paid to
exercise. You're getting a lot of steps in. You know,
I lost, within four months of delivering for Amazon, I
lost 20 pounds. Natividad's shifts with
Amazon were usually on the same route, with at least
200 packages. Once during last holiday
season, he had more than 400 packages and 200 stops in a
single shift. Towards the end of my day,
they sent out two rescues to me to help out to make sure
everything's done before 10 hours. In Baltimore, Dennis says
during peak season, her drivers deliver 350 to 450
packages on each of her DSP's 40 routes. And Amazon has a lot of
these routes to optimize: 148,000 a day, up to
225,000 in peak. And then we look at the
density of the packages, the complexity of the locations
we're going to deliver to, and any other
considerations like weather and traffic from past
history to put a route together that we think is
ideal. Another big challenge, Tomay
says, is planning for the vastly different needs of
areas with various density. Given that we're in over 20
countries and every geography looks different,
it's not just about delivery vehicles or vans anymore. We have rickshaws in India. We have walkers in
Manhattan. In Las Vegas, Amazon held a
roundtable in the spring for DSP owners and drivers,
where Natividad says he spoke for 20 minutes about
the need for Amazon to improve its routing
algorithms, especially within small, dense
communities like an RV park where he says the order of
drop-offs made little sense. As soon as I was done
talking and reading off my list, I got this like slow
clap going on. I'm like, okay, everyone
here can relate. Natividad hopes Amazon will
keep asking for driver feedback as it continues to
innovate in delivery. I think they should do that
probably like once a month with all the DSP
supervision and a few of the drivers, and not the same
drivers every time. That way different feedback
is given. And like seriously listen to
them because they're not the ones out there seeing and
experiencing what we go through. Natividad didn't get to try
out the routing technology in the new vans before he
left to deliver for USPS in July. But he's excited that
the Postal Service is following in Amazon's
footsteps with new vans coming by 2028. The Postal Service intends
to deploy approximately 100,000 vehicles over the
next five years, of which 66,000 units will be
electric. More important than new vans
for Natividad is the stability that comes with
working directly for the government, instead of a
third party that has a contract with Amazon that
could change at any time. Working as an Amazon DSP
delivery driver, there's really no long-term effects
or goals or incentives or benefits. I mean, you get
like health benefits, but compared to the post
office, where the post office is a career. They have union,
retirement, a lot more benefits and pay increases
every year. Pay for Amazon drivers is up
to the discretion of each individual DSP, although
Amazon says it regularly audits DSP rates to make
sure they're competitive. Natividad made$18.50 an hour
. Indeed.com puts average
Amazon driver pay at nearly $19 an hour, 16% higher
than the national average. While tipping isn't worked
into the job like it is for gig workers delivering for
Uber and DoorDash, Amazon did hold a temporary
campaign in December that gave drivers an extra $5 if
customers told their device, "Alexa, thank my driver."
And while Rivian vans represent big improvements
for drivers and sustainability, Amazon is
getting new Ram and Ford gas-powered delivery vans
too. I just found a Ram and a
Ford CDV next to each other. Amazon is also diversifying
its electric fleet beyond Rivian, with thousands of
orders in for electric Ram vans from Stellantis and
electric Mercedes-Benz vans from Daimler. But for now,
drivers are eager to see Amazon keep its current
promise of rolling out tens of thousands more of its
Rivian vans soon. In your dream scenario,
would you drive Rivian van every day? I would. I mean, you can't. You can't beat this. Like you really can't beat
it.
arguably the most important EV on the road right now