Amazon ended its retail delivery program this Friday (01/24/2025). Amazon's retail delivery program allowed it to work with select, 3rd party retailers such as GNC, PacSun, Diesel, SuperDry, Sur La Table, Office Depot and Petco. Some retailers are said to have ended their participation earlier, while some retailers such as GNC and Petco remained active until the 24th (GNC may have a contract where some stores are supported slightly longer). The program gave retailers the ability to ship to their customers the same, or next day, by using Amazon's network of 3rd party, contracted "Flex" delivery drivers. Retailers would input the orders into their internal systems that would communicate with Amazon, who would communicate the routes and commissions to their contracted drivers. The program was created on Aug 1st, 2022, launched nationwide on Jan 12th, 2023 and lasted just under 2 +1/2 years, until Jan 24th, 2025. Amazon said the decision was made to streamline Amazon's delivery with its Same Day and One Day services that ship items from these same retailers.
Another reason for the decision was said by some drivers on Reddit and Meta to be the delivery costs that Amazon was experiencing with independent contracted delivery, which sometimes could reach close to $100 being paid for a 2-hour block. Amazon would put retail routes into 1-3 hour blocks and allow the blocks to rise if no contractors bid on the routes. Routes could often go up significantly if they saw no bids. Drivers would get paid anywhere from $18-$100+ for 1-5, often small items. Routes would be chosen at random and could be just a few miles away or send them across state lines with up to 100-mile trips, according to many current and former drivers. According to many drivers on Reddit, X, YouTube and Meta, these routes would have way less items and take less space than traditional grocery or package Amazon delivery routes, which are also done by Flex contractors or sub-contractors, albeit from different pickup locations.
Delivery gig work has often been part of the conversation over legal and illegal migration. A recent She Made $10,000 a Month Defrauding Apps like Uber and Instacart. Meet the Queen of the Rideshare Mafia | WIRED report from 2024 detailed how some non-citizens use real citizens' identification, knowingly or unknowingly, to be able to drive for ride share and gig work companies when not officially allowed by the ride share companies themselves. Gig work companies introduced facial recognition tools that are still subverted by crafty underground economy entrepreneurs looking to get commissions and referral money from signing up new drivers who can't work legally. On Reddit and X, many long time gig workers have complained about an enormous influx of new drivers on the platform since the pandemic and the subsequent lower pay and harder to find routes. Drivers say that drivers who are illegally using the app, like 3rd party retail pickup locations because they don't verify if the driver is who they say they are on the app. For grocery and package pickups, drivers have to go to an official Amazon location, where they may have to verify who they are with ID as they enter the warehouse.
The largest influx of new drivers may well have migrated to the US legally over the past few years as labor shortages during the pandemic from an assortment of generous COVID relief programs, to booms in real estate, crypto/NFT, and equities, to newfound online opportunities and skills learned by workers; all led to a major labor shortage in lower paying jobs. As soon as fast-food jobs started paying $25/per hour in some markets, word went around the world that there were great job opportunities in the USA. New policies under the Biden Administration assisted new migrants being able to find work right away, with work authorization permits for migrants waiting on a hearing being lowered from 365 days to 150 days, in February 2022. In May 2022, the Biden Administration extended work authorization renewal permits from 180 days to 540 days. Some business councils sought to get work permits to new migrants to as low as 30 days. More than 100 Business Organizations Sign Onto Council Letter Urging Congress to Reduce the Waiting Period for Asylum Seekers to Obtain Work Permits | American Immigration Council Of course if some unscrupulous drivers didn't want to wait at all, they could just contact an illegal gig work broker.
With Donald Trump elected US President, a number of executive orders have placed restrictions on migration and certainly more are to come. While migrant work permits haven't been specifically addressed by the Administration, we don't yet know how Trump will rule given how he has been supportive of H1-B visas and how he may view certain legal migration. Trump also had Jeff Bezos and other Silicon Valley CEOs in attendance at is inauguration, so importing skilled foreign tech workers seems likely to have come up in some side bar conversations after the ceremony. As has been seen in the intense online conversations surrounding migrants and work permits, there is no clear answer to how legal migration will work over the next 4 years.
As it relates to Amazon's 2024 decision to cancel one of their driver delivery programs, it seems to suggest that they are both weighing the risks of an economic slowdown and the acknowledgement that the end of a huge supply of new workers was coming to an end, regardless of who won the presidential race. Amazon seemed skittish about the economy as they stopped construction at their HQ2 location in Arlington Virginia, held off on some hiring, closed some retail locations and laid off 1000s of workers over the past 2 years. It also potentially allows them to crack down more on drivers who shouldn't be on the platform and were flying under the radar by picking up from 3rd party locations. With this decision, it seems they can funnel 1000s of badly needed drivers into the package and grocery delivery space, in the event of less new workers coming onto the platform from migration restrictions. This decision will also impact roughly 200 corporate jobs at their company.