Logistics + Airplanes = Sam Denby

Great video - there should be a part 2 about the “reverse logistics” for returned items.

I worked at Amazon. It was the worst experience I've ever had the displeasure of being a part of. I constantly had nightmares of being fired until it inevitably happened, as it happens to most people who work for the holiday season. They work you to the bone, then thank you by firing you as soon as January starts.

For anyone interested, Amazon actually finished building that huge hub in Cinci across from DHL and DHL has since lost half of its freight and a significant portion of its workforce due to how many workers had been so fed up with how DHL was treating and paying them that they were actually willing to leave for freaking AMAZON of all places. Amazon was even able to staff their complex off the bat because they very calculatedly offered at least a $1 better hourly wage than DHL for most positions to poach all of their frustrated workers and potential new hires. As an outsider looking in through multiple friends and family, it’s been legitimately interesting seeing how Amazon plays ball. They took over right out of the gate. Almost like they studied DHL and saw blood in the water and attacked while DHL was just putting up posters of supposed quotes from unnamed workers about how much they love DHL and how they “would never abandon DHL for another company”. Shit’s seriously insane. DHL got decimated before they even realized just how badly they had fucked up and that it was too late now that there was actual competition.

Yay, a video about planes.

Nothing better than coming home from delivering two hundred Amazon parcels and seeing this on the top of my feed.

Love Amazon or hate it, no one can deny that the systems they have engineered and put in place is astounding. Think management, figuring out where to put the different types of centers, the real estate acquisitions, the engineering, the robots. My mind is boggled.

This reminded me that I needed a new ice scraper. I ordered while watching the video. Amazon owes you a commision.

fascinated by logistics because of this channel and factorio

In my very rural area, its the same guy with a van that delivers EVERY package, regardless of original carrier. The ultimate in last mile specialization :)

Weird hearing Amazon Prime be called 2-day delivery when, in the UK, Prime is next day if not same day

Absolutely love the care, depth and amount of research you and your team put into your videos. Thank you!

Me: Living in rural Canada My amazon package: Well, it's prime delivery so it will take two weeks

"you see" - WP most common phrase

I’d love to see a report on how Amazon processes returns. I’ve heard there is tremendous waste due to disposal being more cost effective.

After all that.. I would like to refund please ☺️

I’m still waiting for this video was sponsored by Boeing: The first 100 to buy one 737 Max get one free

"Humans, even low-paid ones, are expensive." - The motto of *every company ever*

This is really logistics in practice in micro-scale. Your vids really taught me more than my school that is aimed at this field.

I ordered something from walmart this past xmas season and I got an email saying it would be at my home before 5pm that day and it was! They even sent me another email showing it was delivered and included a photo of the package on my front porch.

I’m a mail carrier and I HATE amazon. We have to come in on Sunday and HOLIDAYS just to deliver amazon. No exceptions. I worked Easter, Christmas, thanksgiving and people work shocked / confused why I was there delivering their toilet paper at 7 am Christmas morning

As someone who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada I was thoroughly confused to see my province in California

Great video - thanks fore making it. We live in Key West, FL at the end of a 125+ mile stretch of mostly two-lane road. (In fact, we're closer to Havana Cuba - 90 miles, than to Miami - 145 , lol). Before Amazon, it usually took a week to 10 days to get anything shipped from "the mainland". Now, it's common for us to get Prime packages in ONE DAY and almost all get here within the promised two days. Now I understand how they can move things so quickly. - Thanks!

2 day shipping is normal in the US? Wow. Last week I was thinking about my faulty garage light as I couldn't sleep and was looking into replacements. I decided to repair it and ordered a new led driver module at 4am and then went to bed, only to be woken up by the Amazon delivery 6 hours later. To me, that wasn't just same day delivery; thanks to sleep, it was immediate delivery. No-one can compete with that, and that's quite worrying.

I work at one of their fulfillment warehouses and the amount of product that goes out and in during a day is absolutely staggering.

Next video: How Wendover's Logistics works Edit: Tysm for the likes guys

I love that the Cincinnati airport is not on Cincinnati. It’s actually in Hebron Kentucky, which is a good 20 to 30 minute drive to Cincinnati depending on traffic. I used to work at the DHL hub.

Loving the Colorado focus here. I find in my own online sales that living and working in Denver lets me ship my packages faster to different parts of the country than I could in other places I've lived.

Me: *clicks same day shipping at **11:59* Amazon driver: “I am speed”

As an Croatian, I love amazon. I want to order a CD for 10 dollars, shipping is $85 plus import fees.

This is so interesting! I've lived really close to both the Aurora and Thornton center but didn't know how they operated differently from each other

I can't believe I watched the *WHOLE* thing! Man, you are enticing a fellow to listen to with all that _intel_ you have been sharing. Thank you for your efforts.

Jeff Bezos knew how to ship properly by using Sam’s skillshare coupon in a Video which is now 2 years old

I work at a Amazon distribution center, and I have to say, it's quite odd to see my job on display on UKposts.

Your point at 15:38 about the logistics. Got that bang on the money, they've already started doing it in the UK. In fact I think they started rolling it out last year a few months after the pandemic started. The company I work for is on the waiting list for their delivery services.

I am amazed... The complexity and arrangement... just... fabulous

in the uk, if you order something on amazon before 10 am, you can get same day delivery, otherwise you get next day delivery

I used to work for amazon as a Packer our quota was 230 units an hour which roughly means you have to pack 3-4 items a minute. To put that in perspective over a single 10h shift that one facility pushed out over 8 million items a day between all its employees Edit: to clarify i worked in a central mailing hub in Ohio

Another fascinating video - would love a version for the UK 👍 Very different setup here given the smaller scale - overnight with Prime, 7 day delivery and almost all by Amazon themselves (through gig economy workers)

The transformation from content to ad was so seamless, I watched the whole ad!

Can we take a moment to pause and appreciate how much Sam’s narration has improved since the inception of Wendover?

Amazon just opened up a regional distribution center here in my city within the last year. I placed an order this weekend and literally thought to myself _"I gotta wait four days? This is bullshit."_ before realizing how spoiled Amazon has made me. 🤦

I live in Denver and work in trucking and logistics. I LOVE your videos - they are my career development.

As a North Dakotan i can confirm that indeed we use our window scrapers fall, winter and spring

You can see my former high school to the right of the Denver fulfillment center at 3:36. Its construction blocked our view of the mountains.

WHERE IS THE LOGISTICS FOR BRICKS VID!! I NEED IT!

Just wanted to give a big thanks to all the hard workers (the people who handle the orders/packing etc), and the truck/delivery drivers. I don't know what I would do without internet shopping (almost all of the items I order are essential items needed for my home, vehicle or work).

Thanks for this information. I was looking for it for many days

When your package does more travelling than you

Its always insane to me how huge america is. I am from germany, I could literally drive everywere in half a day.

I used to drive semi....we were a main sub-contractor for fed ex in at MEM driving "along side" a runway as a 727 or 737 landing or taking off at MEM was awesome !!! of course as you know the FAA wouldn't allow "right aside" to happen.....BUT it sure looked like right aside !

Super informative and very well put together! Exactly what I was looking for, thanks! :)

6:45 this is where the airplane part start

Hey Wendover, huge fan as a youtube lurker :D, been watching you for years. Your story starts when Inventory is already ready to ship. But there's much more logistics within Amazon's FBA system.. I'm a 3rd party FBA seller. If I send 1000 ice scrapers into Amazon, I will ship to 1-2 warehouses, but then Amazon will immediately do a fulfillment center transfer and put 100 pieces in North Dakota and 5 pieces in Miami etc. (determined by algorithms). So before my ice scrapers become available for sale, my ice scrapers will be spread between ~100 different warehouses across the US. They also do auto-rebalancing, so if my Miami ice scrapers all of a sudden sells 4 pieces, Amazon will automatically pull a few piece per warehouse and transfer it into Miami. This is a HUGE reason of why they can do 1-day delivery across major cities because 90%+ of anything you order is already within driving distance. So all these planes and overnight delivery only applies to a small portion of sales where the item is not available in the warehouses around the customer.

I started in an engineering tech role in a 3rd party reverse logistics company a couple months ago after never really thinking about logistics. thinking up and strategizing this sorta stuff is really fascinating. They just promoted me from doing reverse engineering and process dev for one of out clients to a systems engineer doing process dev works on the bulk of the operation, it's stressful but really intriguing to take in time/labor data and then find the roadblocks to increase efficiency.

We live down the street from one of thier wearhouses. My daughter says that's where the trucks got to sleep haha

SUPER INSIGHTFUL! Who here had no clue this is what happened but have a new appreciation for Amazon delivery now???

Me, in the UK: "Wait, Prime Delivery is two days in the US?"

We live in a somewhat rural area. About 10 minutes from a large town and 30 minutes from a small city, almost in a national park/forest on one side and farmland/vineyards on the other. What's interesting is when this video was made our Amazon packages were delivered by USPS. But about 6 months ago, we noticed people using their personal vehicles wearing Amazon vests showing up. And that has now transitioned to official Amazon vans. We still get the occasional USPS drop off, particularly larger items. But by and large it seems Amazon has expanded their delivery system so even semi-rural areas are directly serviced by Amazon.

Your video just read my mind lol... I just ordered a package from Amazon at 4:39 pm, it will be delivered by 5-10pm.. it’s insane how efficient amazon logistics is, and I feel like we tend to take shipping times for granted

I've always had the passion for logistics and supply chains (in fact I graduated in supply chain management) and this channel has always fuelled my passion about this topic (and even more other subjects). Thank you so much Wendover production ❤

Amazon Air employee here. I've never clicked on a Wendover video notification faster. (Edit: And of all facilities, in Lakeland which gets mentioned!) Edit 2: Now some corrections: -Packages from fulfillment centers are trucked straight to the Air Gateway (as AA's airport facilities are known), not via a sortation center. -The air gateway doesn't actually take stuff straight from the truck to the plane on pallets. It actually functions a lot like a sort center. About half the incoming stuff is already sorted into pallets (with boxes) and gaylords (used for all small soft-sided packages and about 1/2 time for boxes) by flight, but the other half is mixed sort. All mixed sort is manually unloaded either onto (1) a conveyor belt that goes to the upper floor and placed on robots that go around to different chutes or (2) placed into the "dumper" which tilts gaylords onto a separate conveyor belt for soft-sided and very small boxes (max maybe 8x6x6 in.) that are sent to the third floor where they get sorted by flight and placed in large nylon bags then down to the 2nd floor to be placed on robots and sent to chutes. The chutes go down to ULDs (the big metal containers that get loaded onto planes), many of which are sorted by their second destination (eg. KSMF-SMF5 for the sort center near Sacramento via a flight to Sacramento). For some of the biggest destinations (on my shift SMF5 and SCK9, which are sortation centers in the Sacramento and Stockton, CA area) that arrive already separated, the gaylords of boxes can be moved by pallet jack to a spot where forklift places it onto a stand that is moved by Kiva robot to the correct ULD, while the small packages get moved to an area where they are manually stuffed in nylon bags and placed in ULDs. On the unloading side of the flight, the ULDs are unloaded directly onto a conveyor belt system and moved to the 2nd floor where they're placed on robots that move to different chutes for different destinations. About 2/3 of packages get sent to sort centers while the remaining packages are placed on trucks that go directly to delivery stations. We send packages to most of Florida except the Panhandle. The JAX5 sort center also sends a small amount of packages to Georgia and coastal South Carolina. -Amazon Air facilities receive and send off flights throughout the day and there isn't long waits (I think he said something about "12 hours later" at one point). There is about six hours between the night shift (11p-7:30a) and day shift (1:30-10p). Also, stuff that arrives during a shift is placed on planes/trucks during that 8-hour shift. For example, at Lakeland, everything that is unloaded from a flight between 11p-7:30a is placed on a truck that leaves at 1, 7, or 10am (differs by destination), except for one destination. Nothing really waits around. I don't think it wasn't mentioned, but worth noting is that most flights operate point-to-point and not round-trip. For example, my shift gets a 767 from Allentown, PA (with packages from fulfillment centers in PA, NJ, & DE including lots of shoes because Amazon bought Zappos, which I think had their warehouse in that area) that leaves 6 hours later for Sacramento, CA. Likewise, a 737 arrives from northern Illinois (KRFD) and leaves for Dallas (KAFW). The Sacramento flight also has a decent amount of stuff (maybe 2-5%) bound for Alaska. Based on the facility codes on packages, these will go to SMF5 (a sort center near Sacramento)-->DSF_?_ (a facility in the San Francisco area)-->PANC (Anchorage airport...fyi Alaska & Hawaii airports begin with P instead of K like other US airports). On the inbound side, about 5-10% of packages bound for the Miami sort center are for Puerto Rico and the USVI while another 5-10% are bound for Latin America (about 80% of those for Colombia) most of which have DHL or national postal service labels with the occasional DHL label for China. I'd say about 5% of packages on the Houston-bound flight are sent to Mexico via the SAT5 sort center (near San Antonio) Before late October, we had a flight to KRFD in northern Illinois which had a lot of packages with DHL labels bound for Asia and Europe (China, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, France, Spain, UK, Ireland, and a surprising amount of packages for Finland). When I first started I was really surprised at the volume of international packages on that flight. Strangest package I've ever seen was a large multi-pack of paper towels (which was shipped in its original box without a surrounding Amazon box) bound for Hong Kong. Other than the international packages, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the USVI, like the video says, packages on flights are for the region where the destination airport is. For the 3 flights during my shift, that's Houston (KIAH) to Texas; Dallas (KAFW) to northern Texas, western Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and a few via OKC5 (Oklahoma City area sort center) to Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas); and Sacramento (KSMF) to northern California and northwest Nevada (Reno & Carson City).

I've only just started using Amazon Australia and it has really made x mas shopping a whole lot easier. My packages arrive the next day which to me is incredible!

Heh, love the shot of Albuquerque when discussing "mid-sized cities". We're actually getting our own distribution center here, being built right now, so we got one day delivery to look forward too. :)

this is fascinating to watch as an amazon employee. i mostly see the second half of the process working at a delivery station, and being a yard marshal I'm often working with our sortation centers on incoming linehauls

Atlas Air (one of the companies that Amazon leases aircraft from) also operates the 747 Dreamlifter aircraft that Boeing uses to fly oversize aircraft components around the world for aircraft assembly, as well as being a huge air freight company. If you look on Flightaware or other flight tracking services, you can see Atlas flights routinely flying the trans-Pacific routes from Anchorage airport to China/Japan destinations. I live right under the route they typically fly if they're coming out of Miami/South Florida and flying to the northeast US. Related, I'd love to see a video about wet/dry aircraft leasing as I think it's actually a fascinating topic. I'm an ADS-B enthusiast though, so watching aircraft movements like this might not be everyone else's cup of tea.

Well done! I never knew it was this complicated!

I worked for Amazon. 3 Buildings. 1 was a Prime. The 2nd was a Sorting Center. Basically a Mail Sort Room. 3rd was a Large Sort building. Saw signs at the Prime for 500 Pick Rates. Stock was 300 when I was there. Single Pack was 90 units per hour. Basically one every 45 seconds. That included Assembling the boxes. Large Sort building I worked at was 75 Pack Rate per hour. Both also include Reloading Packing Supplies at the stations. Sorting was 200 units sorted per hour. Involved walking around with a hand scanner. Scanning and stacking on proper pallets.

This was so cool. I always love seeing trains in my area, and the prime containers fit well with almost any scenery. But thank you for talking about how it works, I got so excited when I saw this video. Ik there’s not much to talk about with trains, since it’s a boring industry to most, but it would be nice to explain how routing trains for companies like CSX, UP, NS, BNSF, KCS, and other large railroads would be nice. Thanks.

"How does Amazon get a package to you?" everybody: *planes.*

Thank you, that was really interesting and well delivered.

Man that fulfillment center they allowed those camera's was nice. At the one I worked at I was the 3rd group to start before it officially opened and had a full staff... within 3 months stuff started breaking by 6 months a lot of it was broken, by 9 months it was pretty much all broken, by 12 months everything was broken in one way or another.. there are "tote tanks" those things weigh about 400 lbs when carrying a full load of empty totes (what I dealt with.) and sometimes more or less depending on what is in filled totes. They have breaks so when you stop the tank it wont move, those were all broken and useless... the wheels were bent on most of them which meant you couldn't go straight without tilting the whole thing partially sideways. Also when turning the tank there is a mechanism in the middle to keep it from what I am gonna call "Sliding" in reality it was just all 6 wheels continuing in the direction you were originally moving... so you couldn't steer the tank you had to stop it turn it and start again... if anyone got hurt they could have sued Amazon for so much it is astounding, everything meant to keep them safe while using a tote tank was broken, in the packing department we had to strip useful parts from broken tape machines and replace the useful parts for broken ones on other machines... We weren't actually supposed to do this, they hired a 3rd party company who manufactures the tape machines to do this but they hadn't been present for 6 months so I was the scavenger for the packing area I was in and otherwise mechanic for those machines, again safety hazard that if I had gotten hurt Amazon would have been liable... many other carts that we utilized for various reasons were breaking or broken and we were required to use them, because there were never enough functioning ones. While we the grunts were supposed to tell our supervisors "No, I am not allowed to use that broken piece of equipment." you entered into their shit list and would get written up for any mistake you made, you were ignored for promotions, or other positions that you had desired. Also after the Pandemic broke out for about a month we had the personal protective equipment we needed, along with ways to clean our station and management gave us time to clean our stations... After that it all practically went out the window, you were lucky to find cleaning supplies to sanitize your station, and even if you did you had no time to do it because the 4 minutes to clean your station affected productivity too much for Amazon's liking. If you were sick you had to use your own time to take any time off or come to work sick because otherwise you risk losing your job, and they don't care if you do there are thousands behind you waiting to get into your spot. EVEN if you thought you had Coronavirus until you had a positive diagnoses from a doctor you were NOT excused... it took me a month to get my test back at one point since I am in Southern AZ the world's leading outbreak spot in the world, a few other places have beat us for a week or month but we always get back up there... I live with and take care of my sick elderly mother when fall rolled around I quit I knew it was going to get a lot worse and based off of friends who worked there it did, according to them practically EVERYONE got it between November and December they stopped sending out notifications of confirmed cases in July because they started coming so often it was essentially just spamming everyone... That being said, I'll be going back this upcoming fall hopefully, so long as the vaccine works... I earned 17.90 because I worked a 12 hour night shift that wage is unheard of here unless you have a degree... I hated it, it was soul crushing work, and it was stressful both mentally and physically and honestly the grunts don't earn nearly enough... My Grandfather worked in a factory in the 50s he earned more in that factory in the 1950s than I did at Amazon in 2019-2020... but yeah there's nothing wrong with something like that if you ask certain people in this country...

Step 1: Promise 2-day shipping. Step 2: Actually, just ship whenever you want. Step 3: Profit.

"Hey Sam, You Wanna Make A Vid About The Logistics of Amazon Shipping?" "No.." "It Has Airplanes In It"

So cool to see my hometown, Lakeland, in a Wendover video!

Amazing and thorough look at this retail powerhouse and the secret of their success!!

I work at an Amazon Delivery center. On the topic of shipping last mile using UPS, people would be dumbfounded if they saw how much Amazon spends on last mile delivery to rural areas. Even though UPS gives huge discounts, its not uncommon to spend upwards of $30 on a package if that's what it takes. We also use UPS to handle our missorts. If a package bound for New York ends up in California, we use the same UPS system. In that case it's not uncommon to spend $80 on a package. It's kind of crazy how much Amazon spends and yet still turns a profit.

5:51 "Coloradoho" Top secret 51st state revealed???

Very Impressive Video and Amazon Operation. WOW! 👍

I live in rural Thailand and have been ordering Amazon items for about 8 or 10 years. I like watching the convoluted route items make to get to my door through their tracking app. They often travel from the coast(s) to Kentucky before a flight to Bangkok (via Tokyo).

16:36 Woah, you can almost see the Bezos alien underneath the skinsuit in this shot. 😮

"their algorithms put products closest to the consumers most likely to buy them - something only possible with big data". I would like to contend this as other "big-box" stores most certainly did this too before the advent of "big data". Given that they could easily track which items sell faster. Amazon just is able to do it at a much larger scale.

Now everytime I order something I will always appreciate how it got to me! This is pretty cool!

Recently I placed an order for Four (4) small Grabbers, A few days later I found on my porch FOUR large Boxes (8 inch 1½' foot x 2 foot) each contained ONE Grabber (1½ inches x 6 inches x 10 inches) with no cushion packing.

Never been this early in a Wendover video ever in my life

Awesome video! I work at an Amazon sortation center here in Los Angeles. It’s been a good experience so far. Yes it’s very labor intensive, yes you are on your feet the whole time you are on the clock, and yes they expect you to move at a constant pace. They have also handled the pandemic very well at the work place.

We have same-day shipping in the UK with Amazon on selected items, like if I order something at 9am I can have it by 6pm in the evening, the logistics for that must be wild

8:45 watching this while sitting in terminal B of the Cincinnati airport is trippy to say the least

Kohls also uses the shipping from store method. What you don't see though, is that stores have surprisingly small stocks of items. If the store doesn't have the item, the customers order is cancelled.

Gotta say that as a 69 year old semi-retired person who drives for the Amazon Flex program that it is terrific. Pay is descent and I can pick the hours when I drive and I love getting out of the house and experiencing my sector of the world as no one else could. I deliver to mansions and sketchy neighborhoods and it is all good!

Love this channel. Seems logistics is the big theme here. Do you have a background in that?

UPS and FedEx both have delivery commit times on air pkg. When lasted checked UPS air pkg delivery times were 8:30am/10:30am and 3:00pm. No matter what size weight or value of the pkg or shipping is free. Which makes a big difference in the operation and cost of delivery service. (Apples and Oranges, their both consider fruits except they each taste different and are used in different ways.) Delivery time commitments for pkgs requires a lot more air flight time,drive time and physical labor. UPS drivers also are required to cover all on call residential pick up request for nextday air and ground pkgs. All in the same work day by the same delivery driver.

Last time I was this early, the Australian bush fires were our biggest concern

Wendovers vids are like treats i legit get snacks and a blacket and watch

The video and the pictures inside the warehouse are true, I work for amazon flex as a driver but I used to be in the warehouse, the pay is amazing with for some deliveries 60 gbp for 3 hours of work (or less depending on how fast you are)

The amount of knowledge this guy has on just about anything under the sun is astonishing and fascinating. Thank you for sharing!

15:43 This is already a thing in the UK, I ordered a hard drive from Aria and it was delivered by Amazon Logistics.

It's worth noting that in regard Amazon offering logistics services to other companies, they already provide this in much of the world through a system called "Multi-Channel Fulfilment (MCF)". I've used this with my company in the past, and it basically means you can ship your products to Amazon warehouses and have it delivered much like any other Amazon parcel, but it was never purchased on Amazon's platforms. The rates are crazy competitive too.

Shoutout from St. Pete FL (home to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, seen at 6:32)

Awesome video and nice to see Lakeland mentioned 👍🏻