Amazon Snags Sorting From FedEx to Avert Package Pileups
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Amazon.com Inc., seeking to avoid shipping delays that marred last year’s holiday season, is taking more control of its delivery system by opening “sorting centers” around the country.
One of those facilities is surrounded by cornfields and cabbage farms in the town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. Unlike the online retailer’s 50 U.S. fulfillment centers where workers gather items to be packed in boxes, the 500,000-square-foot building -- which opened in October -- takes orders that have already been packed and labeled elsewhere. The boxes are then sent to the site to be organized by zip code and stacked six-foot-high on pallets, before getting trucked to nearby post offices for the final leg of deliveries.