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by KillahBhyte 1810 days ago
Agreed on your first point of volume and we're not given enough detail around 2 separate and only tangentially related metrics to make any real conclusions. That said; I did consider this briefly but even then the math to make that work still seems extreme. Are Amazon packages making up that much of our parcel these days? 3-to-1 or 5-to-1 would certainly change the economics for this to make more sense, but are they truly responsible for 75%-85% of all parcels these days? Even if we select for residential only I feel like that is super high.

Then again my monkey brain sucks at statistics and considering the last year or so of my own home usage it is probably close to 1-to-1. And we try to avoid Amazon. So probably a lot closer to those numbers above than I'm comfortable to admit.
1 comments
crazygringo 1810 days ago
In my apartment building in NYC, Amazon packages are absolutely at least 75% of total deliveries, no question. Everything's left in the lobby so it's easy to see.

Probably not higher than 85% though. And of the rest, the next biggest category is packages from clothing stores like J. Crew, Nike, Madewell, etc.

(Also this isn't including groceries or DoorDash, just talking about traditional packages.)

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KillahBhyte 1810 days ago
Dang. Then consider that the 400+ packages was self selected by Portland carriers as some of the worst examples, and 120 deliveries a route is a national average.. It gets murky quick trying to pull anything useful from this especially with it being Vice looking for an editorial angle.

As with most things like this, the numbers seem scary until you peel back the layers. Not a pass to Amazon as the rest of the article is damning in its own right, but a little less crazy than my initial thoughts.

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