I live an hour from Costco and Wal-Mart. I've gotten over the "guilt" of having Jermey, the UPS guy, bring packages to my door. In the weeks where I don't have something delivered he is driving right past my house - and I'm kinda in the middle of nowhere. It isn't uncommon for him to hit at least 2 houses out of the dozen or so that are past me.
If I (and everyone in the area) decided to drive an hour to get to a "real" city with stores, there would be so many more cars on the road. Why not let the big brown truck bring them to our area?
> Why not let the big brown truck bring them to our area?
The article and controversy are explicitly about how Amazon has been replacing the big brown truck with dozens of private vehicles, most of them the size of cargo vans or smaller.
People were not accusing Amazon of causing congestion before, when they were exclusively using UPS, USPS, and FedEx.
1. how many of the things you bought on amazon were things you would have bought at the store otherwise, and how many are things you bought because it was effortless to buy?
2. how many of the things you bought did you need next day delivered? If there were delivered slowly, by a USPS or UPS/fedex driver on a regular route, that would not have been an extra car on the road.
I don't think you're typical. People shop at Amazon for many reasons -- price, selection, loyalty programs, etc.
Even if you are typical, your comment isn't relevant to the original topic.
The point is that Amazon created enormous demand for fast delivery, and then it replaced large delivery operations with Uber-like individual "contractors" that aren't professionals, are crunched for time, and are causing problems for urban areas.
Maybe all of that would be fine if Amazon (or there customers) were paying the price, but they're not.
What's worse is that, in some cases, "the price" is someone's life.
I live an hour from Costco and Wal-Mart. I've gotten over the "guilt" of having Jermey, the UPS guy, bring packages to my door. In the weeks where I don't have something delivered he is driving right past my house - and I'm kinda in the middle of nowhere. It isn't uncommon for him to hit at least 2 houses out of the dozen or so that are past me.
If I (and everyone in the area) decided to drive an hour to get to a "real" city with stores, there would be so many more cars on the road. Why not let the big brown truck bring them to our area?