The price of expansion
How will Amazon deliver in its second biggest market?
MANNHEIM, Germany — Every half an hour, 50 vans sweep into Amazon’s distribution center in Mannheim, Germany, and sweep out again with up to 200 parcels and a precise delivery plan in each.
The tightly choreographed morning operation is designed to maximize speed and minimize costs, preconditions for the success of Amazon’s rapid expansion in its biggest international market.
But contractors which hire delivery people say that finding drivers is increasingly difficult.
Salem Ahmad runs a small logistics company which recently won a contract to deliver parcels for Amazon in the city of Bochum. An Iraqi who has lived in Germany since 2001, he is struggling to find around 50 to 60 new drivers.
Many migrants with families calculate they will get more in benefits than the average 1,600 euros a month Ahmad can pay them, he said. “They think, why bother and work in such demanding job if it won’t benefit them financially.”
Raising salaries could help attract more drivers, Ahmad said: “But at the current rates we have, it’s not easy to solve this problem.”
Amazon sends almost a third of the 1.4 billion parcels delivered to private customers in Germany each year, said Horst MannerRomberg, head of logistics consultancy MDU. He estimates the parcel delivery sector overall is short of as many as 9,000 drivers.
In Munich, where Amazon launched its own delivery service for Germany in 2015, it has recently begun hiring drivers directly. An Amazon spokeswoman said there is usually a shortage of drivers in the city during the Christmas shopping peak.
Bernd Gschaider, Germany director for Amazon Logistics, which covers deliveries from distribution centers, denied there was shortage of delivery drivers in Germany. “Of course we are competing for the best workers as in many other sectors but we believe we offer our drivers - and those of our partners - a good package,” he said.
“HARD LABOR”
Several drivers currently or formerly employed by contractors told Reuters working conditions were punishing.
“The days were difficult: hard labor in every sense of the word,” said one of them, Ihsan Hardan, a 35-year-old father of four from
Syria who spent seven months delivering parcels for a subcontractor driving for Amazon until he quit in May.
Working days were as long as 12 hours, some drivers said, because there was no way they could deliver so many parcels in a standard eight-hour shift. A few drivers said they had to turn up at the depot well before they started driving and return undelivered parcels.
“You have 180 stops, 180 times to get out of and in the car, 180 times you have to find parking, 180 times knocking on client house, sometimes they are there, sometime they aren’t,” Hardan said, declining to name the subcontractor which hired him.
Amazon says it designs routes to fit a regular shift and that contractors should bring in relief drivers if they find they cannot deliver within the time.