[tomatotomato37]

I agree; one thing I often see in articles critical of Amazon citing number is that they fail to account for the absolute absurd number of actors it employs, comparing more to large-scale societal elements like cities or small states rather than the generic corp that rents out the top 40 floors of a downtown skyscraper.

For some fun with with large numbers, Amazon currently employees more people than the state of Wyoming has residents(647,000 to 577,000). Over the course of four years Amazon has killed 10, (or hell, lets make it 50 to compensate for under-reporting) people by traffic accident; the population of Wyoming managed to achieve that rate of death themselves in about the span of a month (or six months for the larger figure) [https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D65F000].

I think those are just direct employees too, if they are fanning out onto contractors I wouldn't be surprised if they are ultimately controlling Walmart levels of employees (2.2 million).

[notus]

Putting more vehicles on the road means more deaths though. I personally think that people's obsession with getting things quickly isn't really sustainable and panders to parts of our character that we would rather do without. "I want it now" reminds me of Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka.

[nerfhammer]

are they really putting more vehicles on the road though? That is, are they replacing a larger number of people driving themselves to stores with a smaller number of professional delivery vehicles?

[notus]

Well Amazon encourages people to make purchases they wouldn't normally make so yeah I would say they do

[justicezyx]

The parent already mentioning the factor that people get things through consolidated delivery, you are still claiming the other side solely.

Is there something wrong?

[StudentStuff]

Amazon is directly putting additional vehicles to the road as a fourth shipping carrier, where USPS, FedEx & UPS already run trucks through these neighborhoods.

If Amazon wanted, they could expand their use of existing infrastructure, namely USPS (which is legally obligated to service homes and businesses) rather than create redundant, poorly maintained secondary infrastructure.

Amazon's FBA program is entirely focused on paying as little as possible to get parcels delivered. There are no living wages, or properly maintained delivery vehicles to be had for the workers that carry Amazon's parcels.

[ses1984]

It's not like you can just fit all of Amazon's load on existing carriers, they would probably need to put more trucks on the road if they absorbed Amazon's load.

[lostapathy]

Correct. We know this to be true because UPS lacked the capacity to deliver for Amazon a few years ago around the holidays, which is what prompted Amazon to start their own service.

[dickeytk]

I don’t think you understood grandparent. He pointed out the consumers needing products would be driving themselves and not having Amazon do it for them.

[macintux]

Not necessarily. It’s quite possible that Prime drives more demand.

[tracer4201]

I’d like to see data before I accept your “quite possible” response, although more demand isn’t a bad thing.