Amazon Flex and the uberisation of logistics
Enrique Dans
Senior Advisor for Innovation and Digital Transformation at IE University. Changing education to change the world...
A great article in Gizmodo, “Amazon’s last mile”, looks at Amazon Flex, a logistics service using part-time couriers, along the lines of Postmates, launched in September 2015 and already fully operational in four areas of the United States .
The idea is simple: anyone over 21 with a driver’s license and a mid-size four-door sedan or bigger can sign up, download an app, and start collecting and distributing packages in windows of between two and five hours (depending on the needs and capacity of the vehicle), scanning barcodes with the application and earning, according to the company, between $18 and $25 per hour. The service’s presentation page is full of motivational videos of part-time couriers, along the lines of making extra money for a holiday, a car, or whatever. This uberisation of logistics allows Amazon much faster and more flexible distribution than traditional delivery companies.
Still largely unknown outside the United States, but like Postmates in many other geographical areas, Flex is part of the gig economy, offering what some argue is exploitation and others flexibility. For Amazon, it’s a way to increase its logistics capacity using people interested in earning money from delivering packages whenever it suits: driving to a company warehouse, loading a bunch of packages in their car and distributing them in a certain area in exchange for a pre-established amount, controlled at all times by an app on their smartphone.
Since the acquisition of Whole Foods, with its network of establishments strategically located less than five miles from forty million US homes, Amazon Flex makes a lot of sense: a network of intermediate warehouses coupled with the flexibility provided by the use of part-time workers allows the company to offer a potentially faster distribution and more precise windows, in a move that can be seen as a sign of the times, an evolution of the sharing economy to the access economy, the exchange of products or services not according to, but access or availability.
This is a potentially more efficient process in many ways, partly by taking advantage of idle resources, and partly thanks to a lack of regulation.
With the right technology used as coordination, part-time work is an opportunity for companies for people looking to generate extra income. For others, they are a concern and a problem that is difficult to defend beyond using non-market strategies and the need for regulation.
A good or a bad thing? Good or bad for whom? For the company or for the worker? For people who were once employed full time under traditional labor agreements? For the economy overall?
(En espa?ol, aquí)
manager at usps
6 年This is what they used to call piecework 100 years ago. It is exploitive and degrades long term relationships with the "employer". ON a less esoteric note, have you ever seen a 75 yearold contractor go up 3 flights of stairs with a 70 lbs. Box of groceries? This a stop gap solution, doomed to long term failure, and designed solely to lean on their delivery partner with the best network in the world and established standards for their delivery employees...the US Postal Service.
FP&A Manager, Truck & Trailer EMEA at Carrier
7 年Economic theory tells us this is good for the economy overall, low skilled jobs that don't need specialisation can be done using idle resources (unskilled workers on idle time).