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When you order something from Amazon, you expect to see a large truck or van delivering your product. However, that might change sometime in the near future. Amazon will let small businesses finish delivering their packages.
This is something that the company has been testing over the past several years. It’s looking to let other people finish delivering packages to their customers. The company started something like this in India under the name “I Have Space”, and it eventually made its way to Japan. Amazon did beta test this in America in 2020, but it wasn’t really widespread, and it focused on rural areas.
Amazon will let small businesses deliver your packages
This initiative is called Amazon Hub Delivery, and it’s meant to be more widespread than the previous initiatives. Already, the company is targeting major cities in several states. As you can guess, it’s starting with cities like New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. It will make its way to more cities as time goes on.
The way this will work is pretty simple. Amazon will partner with several small businesses in these cities. There doesn’t seem to be a shortlist of business types that it will allow. However, the business will need to have ample safe storage space to keep the packages. They’ll need to be able to store them properly and without having them damaged.
We’re sure that there are some other prerequisites that the companies need to meet in order to qualify for the partnership. If anything happens to the packages on the way to the destination, then that will reflect badly on both the small business and Amazon.
Then, the small business will deliver the package to the actual customer. Amazon will be leaving the final stretch of the delivery to the businesses and the company’s couriers can move on to other deliveries.
Amazon will pay these businesses to deliver the packages as well. Axio (via Engadget) estimates that the company will pay small businesses about $2.50 per package. That seems small, but it adds up over time. It could add up to about $27,000 a year for the small business.
Right now, Amazon is expanding this at the moment, and it plans on partnering with at least 2,500 businesses by the end of the year. We’re not sure if it will expand to more cities by then, but it’s possible.