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I don't understand how this would work without having distribution centers that fully cover the nation to within 30 minutes, and having every item they sell at

by javert 13y ago

I don't understand how this would work without having distribution centers that fully cover the nation to within 30 minutes, and having every item they sell at every such center. Even if you just want to cut UPS out of the last 30 minute radius and not stock everything at every distribution center... that's still distribution centers everywhere.

taybin 13y ago
You would only roll this out to certain areas at a time. Not the entire planet at once.
akgerber 13y ago
Wal-Mart and other big chains already has much of that infrastructure in place.
- javert 13y ago
  True. I suspect that most places with a fair number of people, even in semi-rural or rural areas, in the US have a walmart within 30 minutes. Since this service would defeat the purpose of Wal-Mart, I can't see Wal-Mart supporing it, unless there were a merger with Amazon. But the fact that there are so many Wal-Marts suggests that it might be possible to build sufficient infrastructure that mostly covers the continental US, for example.
wpietri 13y ago
Nah. I'm sure they won't promise perfect availability to every customer for every product, at least not initially. There will be a gradual rollout. But it's not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. They're already able to deliver all their things on a reliable schedule to every house in the US. That's the hard part. To do this, they just need to squeeze some more waste and latency out of the system. They've already proven to be very good at that. Remember, our current logistics systems already move basically all the goods Americans need to within a 15 minute drive already; they just make customers do the final pickup themselves at distribution centers (which we call stores). This is just switching the last-mile burden from buyers to the seller. If Amazon gets this working well, there will be plenty of empty big-box stores to serve as local caches.

by javert 13y ago

taybin 13y ago

You would only roll this out to certain areas at a time. Not the entire planet at once.

akgerber 13y ago

Wal-Mart and other big chains already has much of that infrastructure in place.

javert 13y ago
True. I suspect that most places with a fair number of people, even in semi-rural or rural areas, in the US have a walmart within 30 minutes. Since this service would defeat the purpose of Wal-Mart, I can't see Wal-Mart supporing it, unless there were a merger with Amazon. But the fact that there are so many Wal-Marts suggests that it might be possible to build sufficient infrastructure that mostly covers the continental US, for example.

wpietri 13y ago

Nah. I'm sure they won't promise perfect availability to every customer for every product, at least not initially. There will be a gradual rollout. But it's not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. They're already able to deliver all their things on a reliable schedule to every house in the US. That's the hard part. To do this, they just need to squeeze some more waste and latency out of the system. They've already proven to be very good at that. Remember, our current logistics systems already move basically all the goods Americans need to within a 15 minute drive already; they just make customers do the final pickup themselves at distribution centers (which we call stores). This is just switching the last-mile burden from buyers to the seller. If Amazon gets this working well, there will be plenty of empty big-box stores to serve as local caches.