SALT LAKE CITY — For Amazon, next-day delivery is practically an old school mentality; that's why its new Salt Lake City fulfillment center will deliver packages to customers in as little as five hours.
The brand new 150,000 square foot facility west of the Salt Lake City International Airport, the first of its kind in Utah, hosted a ribbon-cutting event Thursday.
"We're excited about bringing a new service to our customer base, and reduce that lead time to our customers," said Steve Volk, Amazon site leader.
With faster click-to-delivery service, Utah customers will now have the option to receive their items within hours, not days, as Amazon's new center will fulfill and deliver from the same building.
"With Amazon robotics technology, which we utilize here, we have the ability to move approximately a million units of inventory around the fulfillment center and bring it to our associates' fingertips, who can then process those orders within that five hour window," Volk said.
Another new Amazon wrinkle is that the company will utilize a flex-driver program, meaning independent drivers will use their own vehicles to make deliveries and not rely on the omnipresent Amazon trucks.
Nearly 150 people currently work at the fulfillment center, but Volk said Amazon hopes to increase that number to 250 part-time and full-time employees in order to get packages to customers quicker than ever before.
"We obsess over customers, and we want to leverage that customer obsession and continue to listen to them and bring this service to them."
