Amazon Recruiting Small Local Businesses To Deliver To Rural America

In a program that Amazon has kept largely under wraps, it turns out they have quietly been recruiting small mom-and-pop style shops in rural areas to join a pilot delivery program. The eCommerce giant is hoping to utilize downtime amongst staff in local stores to become their delivery drivers for their customers that live in more rural areas.

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It has been a common question as to how the logistics behemoth would be able to deliver to the most rural 15% of the country and now it seems like we have at least a potential answer to that question.

The Amazon Hub Delivery Partner Program

The secretive program does have its own landing page where you can see the finer details of becoming a delivery partner, which includes a webinar, testimonials, an FAQ section, and a sign-up box to learn more. As far as we know at this time, they are only looking for delivery partners in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

To become a Hub Delivery Partner, however, businesses have to commit to the type of service we have all come to expect from Amazon, namely to deliver packages every day of the week, including Sundays, with just five holidays off each year. For those mom-and-pop style shops that are always open, this is nothing out of the ordinary.

One Alabama business owner that is an Amazon Hub Delivery Partner went on the record to state how that for his business there had only been upsides so far. Stating he works 7 days a week anyway so that wasn’t a problem, it had brought in extra income for his family and had even led to him hiring more staff in the local community.

Amazon Logistics Innovation

As it stands currently Amazon delivers an estimated two-thirds of customer orders across the US, with that number increasing year on year. The company also hates relying on their logistics competitors to handle deliveries as quite simply they know they can do a better job and don’t want to risk damaging the customer relationship.

For this reason with USPS having its own financial troubles and operational challenges, this program from Amazon seems like a very clever way to bring the famed buying experience to the more rural population for which a Sunday delivery is still not a thing.

With this innovation, alongside the continuing dominance of Amazon logistics, it seems like the predictions that by the end of this year Amazon would be the largest delivery company in the US is still looking likely to be the case.