UPS drivers drive a UPS truck. UPS pays for the gas and maintenance. That's a pretty big difference.

UPS also has a union.

I worked trailers for UPS back in the day and from the sounds of things from the drivers is was just as hectic. I heard that you don't take a lunch break until about 2 years in once you've learned all the ins and outs of a route.

Yeah UPS is probably one of the better ones. If you want a comparison to Amazon maybe try FedEx

FedEx is non-union. They spend an insane amount of money marketing themselves as a good employer (all that, "Truck driver to pilot" bullshit).

I've have friends who were freight truck drivers talk about it. A lot of young kids get sucked up into non-union shops and are told about how much better it is; how they shouldn't want a union. Most of the unionised freight companies do pay better though; or if they don't, they make up for it with more benefits and lower road time.

I don't believe all FedEx drivers have to supply their own trucks but most freight oth drivers do. They also work pretty strict and tight deadlines.

Most delivery services in general work their employees hard. An ex of mine drove for different food and drink vendors driving truck doing ltl to grocery stores and gas stations and they would consistently exceed maximum hours cdl drivers are allowed to work.

> and they would consistently exceed maximum hours cdl drivers are allowed to work

Just a reminder, there exists no maximum number of hours CDL holders may work, they just can't drive after a certain number of hours without a sleep break. Many truckers will operate in such a manner that they drive to the destination legally, reach their max allowable hours driving upon arrival, and then continue working several more hours unloading. Grocery warehouses are notorious for this.

It's an important distinction because if you are a local driver with a 'day cab', you can't exactly take your sleep break in the truck and would be more likely to break the law to drive the truck back home (or the company yard). An 'over the road' driver has a sleeper berth and can take a proper break most anywhere they can legally park.

I did many FedEx loads as an over the road driver and I found them to be good runs. Many were overnight runs from one airport to another and I definitely had enough time, it wasn't as if I had to skip breaks or hurry. And the FedEx staff and load/unload procedures were very organised and easy. FedEx loads were seen as desirable and hassle-free.

FedEx is FedEx express (red label) and ground/home (green).

The green ones are contract drivers. In my areas a altmof guys who used to do bread routes bought FedEx routes.

Are you saying that Amazon drivers have to bring their own cars and handle the maintenance themselves.

A news like that would be worthy of some major headlines.

I am unsure of what to think of this. It sickens me. In Scotland, Amazon workers chose to sleep in tents near the warehouse. In the depths of winter.

1) Workers in the warehouse at Amazon are in pretty bad conditions but how does this compare to working in a warehouse in other companies? Not sure if things are rosy elsewhere

2) What I fear is the growth and normalization of this behaviour in the future. Crappy jobs and child labour were acceptable during the Industrial Revolution, it was always better then no job in the rural area. But now it feels like a step backwards. In the information age, when tech giants are changing/destroying entire industries to create this new (great?) future?

3) And then, what happens when delivery drivers are replaced by drones and autonomous car makes car ownership irrelevant? Cloud subscription has made hardware servers irrelevant. Will we have car subscription to Google, Tesla and Uber? How will we earn money to pay for those subscriptions and buy on Amazon?

:?

I can't wait until drones and other autonomous deliveries are available because maybe people will start getting their packages when they are supposed to.

For example I ordered a small package from Amazon last week. I don't order a lot from Amazon but when I do, there seems to always be delays and problems.

They guaranteed it by yesterday but it's still not here and isn't scheduled to be delivered for another 2 days putting it 4 days past the "guaranteed" delivery time.

This was standard shipping which is treated in the same way as free shipping in terms of delivery times.

Reason? Who knows, all I know is it was very likely a human error out of my control.

- Amazon's dashboard tells me I requested an address change even though I didn't.

- Amazon's phone rep tells me the USPS screwed up by delivering it to the wrong zone's post office.

- USPS tells me Amazon tends to ship things in pallets of 100 parcels and the pallet for my zone was filled so they put it into a different pallet (clearly knowing it would delay the package).

- USPS won't compensate me (I was put into a 30min 3 way conversation with Amazon, USPS and myself).

- Amazon updates me today saying the item has been dropped from tracking and is tagged as "lost in transit".

- USPS tells me the package is on the other side of the state I'm in (NY).

- Amazon said they will ship a new item out with 2 day delivery which doesn't help me get the item when it was supposed to arrive.

I understand that every single US govt ran service tends to be horrendous in terms of efficiency and quality but Amazon is supposed to be one of the most efficient platforms in the world.

I'm guessing this entire issue was due to some over worked warehouse employee just saying "fuck it" and threw my box into the wrong pallet but a robot would haven't made this mistake and a drone would have likely gotten to my residence a few hours after ordering instead of closer to 11-12 days.

I suspect Amazon may be overloading their capacity to actually fulfill their promised delivery timeframe (the hotel industry does this a lot with overselling rooms) for the simple reason that most people won't complain or can be placated easily. In the past year or so I've noticed a big change with Amazon Prime in particular to that end. I still get the items ordered after 1-2 days in shipping, but it's increasingly common to not ship for a day or two after the order is placed.

Without prime it typically takes 4-5 days for the order to go into "preparing for shipment", then 1-2 days for it to be shipped, followed by 2-3 days to get here.

It's kind of sad really. It's like your item is being held hostage because you haven't bought into using Prime.

For the reasons you just mentioned (it takes a day or 2 for it to ship) is the reason I'll never buy Prime. I don't like the idea of paying for a service that says 2-3 day free shipping but rarely comes in time.

Back in the good old days of mid-2000 you could order stuff from NewEgg and you'd get your package in 3-4 days all the time for the same shipping price that takes Amazon 6-10 days.

When an order is stuck in 'preparing for dispatch' it is easier just to cancel the order and try again. The same item magically gets dispatched as normal.

> Seems like "it sucks to works for Amazon" has been added in a permanent spot on journalist's radars

It's not a narrative that was pulled out of thin air. It was earned.

I've said it before on here and I'll say it again. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2009. I returned to the United States after leaving for four years and I feel more than ever that Amazon is now the new Wal-Mart. I no longer buy anything from Amazon; to the point of using services like Digital Ocean/Linode/etc over AWS for the open source projects I work on.

You're using the wrong phrasing - Amazon would never put it like that. Those drivers are Amazon associates, not workers.

UPS drivers have a union contract that caps the amount of hours a week they can work. Last I heard, that was 60 hours/wk.

Once they time out, UPS needs another driver. From what I hear in my area, they're way understaffed.

UPS is better, but iirc they screwed the new guys a few years ago with benefits.

You still work super hard and are watched carefully.

The worst are the Amazon sweatshops and the post office. Letter carriers mostly got buyouts and the replacements make $12/hr and have awful benefits.

I guess it sucks if it's a full time job. The kind of job that works people to the bones and leaves them with anxiety and depression in their late 30's . I did shitty jobs too, working in corn fields and stuff like that. It just breaks you.