Wal-Mart Employees are Now Making Deliveries
Wal-Mart is testing an app that matches online order delivery addresses with its employees' driving routes home so the workers can deliver packages ordered online as they drive home.
"Unlike crowdsourced delivery, where the driver has to travel (often out of the way) to pick up the package, then drive the full distance to deliver it, our associates are starting at the same place as the packages," said Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart eCommerce U.S., in a blog post.
The app matches online order delivery addresses with employees' driving routes home from work, built to minimize any more driving than what the employee would do anyway to get home. Delivering is completely voluntary, and the employees can choose when they want to deliver, how many packages they can take and what size.
"Once they're done working at the store for the day, they pick up the packages from the backroom, load them into their vehicle, enter the delivery addresses into the GPS on their phone and head towards home," Lore said.
Wal-Mart compensates the employees for it but declined to elaborate how it works.
Wal-Mart said the test has only been in progress for a month but so far "hundreds" of deliveries have been completed in two locations in New Jersey and one in Arkansas.
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