
Amazon Buys Thousands of Its Own Truck Trailers - anigbrowl
http://recode.net/2015/12/04/amazon-buys-thousands-of-its-own-trucks-as-its-transportation-ambitions-grow/
======
chiph
From people I know in the trucking business, the problem with delivering to
Amazon's warehouses is inefficiencies in getting the trucks into and out of
the yard. They're just not being run well. Stories of 50-truck-long queues
being run off by the local police for blocking entrances to other nearby
businesses..

Hopefully this will help, as the trucks can deadhead[0] to their warehouse and
do a drop/hook[1], with the trailers being positioned to the warehouse doors
by Amazon's own employees acting as yard dogs[2] for loading/unloading the
contents. This lets Amazon manage the activity in their yard themselves and
hopefully be more organized.

[0] Drive just the truck portion, without a trailer.

[1] The cab (only) portion of the truck drives to where the trailer is, hooks
up and drives away with it. Upon delivery, they park the trailer in the yard,
lower the landing legs and unhook.

[2] A yard dog is a specialized truck that is shorter and more maneuverable,
able to make tighter turns in the confined spaces of a yard.

~~~
robertp
I have driven by Amazon warehouses before and never seen this happen once. Do
you have examples?

~~~
chiph
Here's one mention:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucking/comments/3uzlzs/16_hours_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucking/comments/3uzlzs/16_hours_and_still_waiting_on_a_drop_and_hook/)?

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andrewstuart2
It's been mentioned before (I think I saw it here) but trailers like these
would be such a great launch platform for drones. They'd no longer be limited
to X miles from the Distribution Center, but could just send relatively few
trucks out to strategic locations optimized for that day's deliveries, and let
the drones launch from there and automatically deliver.

Have battery-swapping robots on the truck too so that your drones can keep
delivering packages without a long wait to charge.

30-minute deliveries seems only to be the tip of the iceberg for what drone-
powered deliveries could facilitate.

~~~
mfenniak
But... how does the truck have the inventory to fulfill whatever is ordered,
within 30 minutes? You don't know in advance what "the day's deliveries" are
going to be, or where they will be, because the drone deliveries are on-
demand.

~~~
dman
I think on amazons scale, the number of people buying a good within a large
area would have some near term predictability I would imagine. In fact I would
be surprised if Amazon does not speculatively dispatch goods ahead of time to
local warehouses based on projected demand for orders that have not been
placed yet.

~~~
jonknee
They even have a patent for shipping orders to customers before they are
anticipated to purchase it (pre-order delivery!).

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-
ships/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/)

~~~
jacquesm
Whoever dreamed that up was watching minority report.

~~~
jonknee
It made more sense a few years ago when there weren't distro centers near most
major population centers and 1hr delivery options. Pre-shipping isn't going to
be 1hr by much!

~~~
gtremper
Maybe that's how they've implemented 1hr shipping?

~~~
jonknee
No, they just have urban area distro centers with commonly ordered products
that would be desired quickly. Here in Seattle it's an old car dealership
that's right near downtown--tons of space for delivery cars and enough for
popular SKUs.

------
akg_67
Amazon is following Walmart playbook. This is what Walmart did to make sure
timely (Just-in-Time) Delivery between their warehouse and retail locations.

There are business case study on how Walmart used their own freight truck
network to beat their retail rivals by dedicating more space in a retail store
to retail shelves instead of storing inventory.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Precisely. Later, they simply leased the space out to corporations like P&G
(or their subs ) and offered logistics/freight service.

WalMart was the first retail network to roll up the whole day every day into a
single ( green-bar) report on Mr. Sam's desk.

~~~
addicted
This points to what I don't understand about the Amazon financial story.

Walmart built up their massive infrastructure business while being
simultaneously immensely profitable. However, at Amazon, building out
infrastructure comes at the expense of profits.

What am I missing that a lot of smart people are seeing in Amazon?

~~~
Spooky23
Walmart isn't very profitable by tech standards... 3.5%.

That's why imo Amazon is a big hype machine. All of these warehouses speed
delivery but add overheads.

Their stock pricing assumes they are a tech play that they'll magically
achieve walmart style scope with high margins.

I wonder what happens when rates spike.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
But Amazon Prime is terrifyingly great. It would now be officially hard to
give up.

------
deadowl
My initial interpretation of the title was that someone at Amazon had managed
to purchase truck trailers for Amazon on Amazon.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Not yet, but soon. First they need to buy the truck trailers to keep in stock,
then they need to buy the larger truck trailers to transport the truck
trailers during shipping.

~~~
dougdonohoe
Reminds me of ship shipping ships

[http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-
that...](http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-
other-ships/)

------
rmason
How soon will Amazon go into the freight business? After all they ran their
own servers and then with excess capacity started AWS. So if a particular
trailer is 75% full on a given run why not rent out the space?

If you're running dead head why not rent it out for a retail price rather than
letting a freight broker fill it? A startup running on AWS could hand over its
logistics to Amazon as well.

~~~
coderdude
There is Fulfillment by Amazon:

[http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-
amazon/benefits.ht...](http://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-
amazon/benefits.htm)

------
malandrew
My bet: Amazon has an incentive to get the trailers but not the trucks _yet_
because they will get into trucks once they can invest in autonomous trucks.

Having their own trailers allows them to explore the roboticization of loading
and unloading them now. i.e. Kiva Robotics meets truck trailer loading and
unloading.

Moving their inventory into trucks but still tracked and managed by their Kiva
Robotics systems also lets them reduce land costs and possibly even eliminate
nexus in certain states for tax reasons since they could have these mini
warehouses drive from a low tax state to a high tax state for deployment.

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alricb
Meh, no Manac underride guards [1], [2].

[1]: [http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-unwraps-new-truck-
trailers-j...](http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-unwraps-new-truck-trailers-
just-in-time-for-the-holidays/) [2]: [http://www.trucknews.com/health-
safety/trailer-underride-gua...](http://www.trucknews.com/health-
safety/trailer-underride-guards-put-to-the-test/1002207924/)

~~~
Eiriksmal
Yeah, good eye. These pictures are terrifying. I wasn't aware their were
different types of underride guards.

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/48/2/1](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/48/2/1)

------
ortusdux
I wonder if they will load the trucks using kiva robots.

I've loaded and unloaded trucks for about a year. Being able to load and
unload autonomously would save plenty of time and money.

~~~
chiph
Maybe a new model Kiva that has larger wheels that can make it across the
door-trailer gap. If there's a ramp and a height difference, the goods
(presumably on a pallet of some kind) can't tip over.

~~~
ortusdux
I would change how the trailer docks.

Right now the weight is still on the wheels and each additional load strains
the suspension. Most trailers have pneumatic load balancing, so the bed drops
with the load and then slowly pumps back up. Because of this a free-floating
hydraulic ramp is needed. These interfaces are finicky and an unnecessary
bottleneck. I've managed to get a 5 ton lift stuck on the ramp before.

I would put anchor points akin to trailer hitches on the back corners of the
bed. The driver backs up to the bay, aligns the posts over the hitch, and
hydraulics lift the hitches until they mate with the posts. Next they would
lift up the truck bed, pull the truck back towards the bay, and set it down in
a grove so the bed and warehouse floor are perfectly aligned. It would be
similar to how a u-haul ramp mates with the truck bed
([https://youtu.be/Ch7ukPPtZOI?t=46s](https://youtu.be/Ch7ukPPtZOI?t=46s)),
except you would be mating the truck bed with a building.

You could also have a giant drawbridge style ramp that lowers down and anchors
to the back of the truck bed. It could double as the bay door. You could also
add in outriggers that hold the bed at one height during loading. Alignment
would be tough. Possibly the outriggers could sink into divots in the ground
and shift the bed into position.

Both of these would also add a full width mating, which would allow for
multiple bots to load at the same time.

Heck, I like the idea of having 4 hydraulic lifts, one for each corner of the
bed, and have them lift the trailer up until it is flush with the warehouse.
This would allow for the added perk of making taller, 2 story trailer beds and
loading in two sets of shelves.

There are infinite possibilities, but I would be many of them are cheap enough
to be worth the investment. One this is for sure, operating a lift is boring
and I have way to much time to think on the job.

~~~
chiph
At that point, why not switch to a 40' container? It already has the lift
points on the corners. Not sure if the doors swing 180 degrees.

------
douche
Vertical integration. What percentage of Fedex, UPS, and USPS business is
Amazon deliveries? I might be worried if I was in their shoes.

~~~
schwap
I wouldn't be too worried, yet. There is a lot more to shipping a package from
KY to CA than a few trucks.

~~~
jonknee
Well they also have planes and delivery people... It's not that far off. They
also have distro centers all over the place so orders frequently come from
within a few hours away (or less!) and not a few states away.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-secretive-air-cargo-
opera...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-secretive-air-cargo-operation-is-
running-in-ohio-and-signs-point-to-amazon)

~~~
goatforce5
Yes. I was going to point out the same thing:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9790916/amazon-air-
cargo-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9790916/amazon-air-cargo-
shipping-aerosmith-ohio)

~~~
jonknee
Which is just blogspam sourcing the Motherboard article I gave...

------
Animats
Maybe they want to standardize trailers so loading will work better. This may
be a step towards robotic loading and unloading.

~~~
jonknee
What's not standard about them already? Like most things with Amazon they want
to do faster/cheaper and not relying on third parties is a great way to do
that.

------
beamatronic
Excess space in the truck trailers will be used as employee housing.

------
srameshc
Amazon is trying to build its own logistics with drones and is probably well
aware of self driven trucks (which many automotive companies are testing ). To
build on that, all it will need for now are those Truck Trailer. As the self
driving automotive industry gets more mature in near future, their trucking
partners will be replaced eventually. And who knows it might already be
working on its own Self Driven automotive project.

~~~
srameshc
Amazon will have to build efficient container or trailer management system if
it has to use self driven trailers. May be this will give a little better idea
on what I am talking about. [http://fleetowner.com/blog/aiming-self-driving-
freight](http://fleetowner.com/blog/aiming-self-driving-freight)

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ArkyBeagle
People who do not understand WalMart are doomed to reinvent it.

~~~
douche
Probably I have been watching too much South Park, but this instantly made me
think of the final scene of "Something Wall Mart This Way Comes"

~~~
ArkyBeagle
That episode is a work of genius. With poop jokes.

