Fresh from its $1 trillion market valuation victory, Amazon Inc. has recently announced its purchase of 20,000 brand new Mercedes vans as the company looks to bolster further its already expansive delivery program.
Amazon said on Wednesday that it has ordered 20,000 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans that are intended for use in its latest last-mile delivery program in the US, Fox Business reports. This latest figure is more than four times as much as the orange and black company previously announced this summer.
As the online retail giant continues to grow in size and reach, Amazon is now brewing up initiatives to invite small businesses to create companies which would carry its excess supply of delivery packages around the country, the Wall Street Journal said.
Through this scheme, the e-commerce behemoth will be offering training as well as huge discounts on van leasing for entrepreneurs willing to tap on the offer.
The vans, which will all soon carry Amazon's ubiquitous logo, are part of the company's continuing effort to answer the ever-increasing demand for delivery trucks and personnel to transfer items from any of its warehouses to the customer's doorsteps. In the industry, this is called last-mile delivery.
Currently, Amazon is tapping on logistics giants such as FedEx, UPS, and even the US Postal Service, along with other independent contractors to fulfill its delivery requirements.
With the new Delivery Service Partner program, Amazon will begin outsourcing its delivery services to a network of fleet-management companies scattered around the country. Each of which will man 20 to 40 trucks, depending on the size of its designated area, and could respectively employ close to a hundred drivers.
The leased Amazon vans will eventually be owned by partner companies later on.
Beneficiary of the Program
Obviously, Mercedes-Benz, which is under the much larger German company Daimler AG, will be among the first to benefit from this bulk purchase.
According to the report from Bloomberg, the luxury car maker is opening up a new plant in North Charleston, South Carolina just for the sole purpose of producing the Amazon-branded Sprint vans.
The manufacturing site is eyeing to employ close to a thousand people for its initial operation and the numbers are expected to balloon to 1,300 at the beginning of 2020.
Trillion Dollar Market Valuation
As previously reported on this site, the Jeff-Bezos-led mega company just crossed the $1 trillion cap on Tuesday after its stocks hit at the record-high of USD$2,050.49 per share. Amazon is the second to do so following Apple's successful feat last month.
