For the 275,000 Amazon drivers dropping off 10 million packages a day around the world, the job can be a grind. But a lot has changed since drivers in 2021 told CNBC about unrealistic workloads, peeing in bottles, dog bites and error-prone routing software.
Among the biggest developments is the arrival of a brand-new electric van from Rivian.
Amazon was a big and early investor in the electric vehicle company, which went public in late 2021 with a plan to build trucks and SUVs for consumers and delivery vans for businesses. Since July, Amazon has rolled out more than 1,000 new Rivian vans, which are now making deliveries in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Las Vegas, Nashville, New York City and Austin, Texas.
The partnership began in 2019, when Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos announced Amazon had purchased 100,000 electric vans from Rivian as one step toward his company’s ambitious promise of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
″[We] will have prototypes on the road next year, but 100,000 deployed by 2024,” Bezos said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in September 2019. Amazon has since revised the timeline, saying it expects all 100,000 Rivian vans on the road by 2030.
Rivian has faced several challenges in recent months. It cut back 2022 production amid supply chain and assembly line issues. Its stock price dropped so sharply last year that Amazon recorded a combined $11.5 billion markdown on its holdings in the first two quarters.
CNBC talked to drivers to see what’s changed with the driving experience. We also went to Amazon’s Delivering the Future event in Boston in November for a look at the technology designed to maximize safety and efficiency for delivery personnel.
For now, most Amazon drivers are still in about 110,000 gas-powered vans — primarily Ford Transits, Mercedes-Benz Sprinters and Ram ProMasters. Amazon wouldn’t share how it determines which of its 3,500 third-party delivery firms, or delivery service partners (DSPs), are receiving Rivian vans first.
The e-commerce giant has been using DSPs to deliver its packages since 2018, allowing the company to reduce its reliance on UPS and the U.S. Postal Service for the so-called last mile, the most expensive portion of the delivery journey. The DSP, which works exclusively with Amazon, employs the drivers and is responsible for the liabilities of the road, vehicle maintenance, and the costs of hiring, benefits and overtime pay.
Amazon leases the vans to DSP owners at a discount. The company covers the fuel for gas-powered vans and installs charging stations for electric vehicles.
The company says DSP owners have generated $26 billion in revenue and now operate in 15 countries, including Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil, Canada, and all over Europe.
What drivers think
In the early days of testing the Rivian vans, some drivers voiced concerns about range. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC the vans can travel up to 150 miles on a single charge, which is typically plenty of power for a full shift and allows drivers to recharge the vehicle overnight.
As for maintenance, Amazon says that takes place at Rivian service centers near delivery stations or by a Rivian mobile service team, depending on location.
Julietta Dennis launched a DSP, Kangaroo Direct, in Baltimore three years ago. She employs about 75 drivers and leases more than 50 vans from Amazon. She now has 15 Rivian vehicles.
“It’s very easy to get in and out with all of the different handles to hold on to,” Dennis said. She said that some drivers were hesitant at first because the vehicles were so new and different, “but the moment they get in there and have their first experience, that’s the van that they want to drive.”
Baltimore DSP owner Julieta Dennis shows off a Rivian electric van at Amazon’s Delivering the Future event in Boston, Maryland, on November 10, 2022.
Erin Black
Brandi Monroe has been delivering for Kangaroo Direct for two years. She pointed to features on a Rivian van that are upgrades over what she’s driven in the past. There’s a large non-slip step at the back, a hand cart for helping with heavy packages and extra space for standing and walking in the cargo area.
“We have two shelves on both sides to allow for more space,” Monroe said, adding that she’d prefer to drive a Rivian for every shift. “And then the lights at the top: very innovative to help us see the packages and address a lot easier, especially at nighttime.”
There’s even a heated steering wheel.
Former driver B.J. Natividad, who goes by Avionyx on YouTube, says his non-electric van could get very cramped.
“I remember one time I had 23 or 24 bags and over 40 oversize packages and I had to be able to figure out how to stuff that all in there within the 15 minutes that they give us to load up in the morning,” said Natividad, who now works for USPS.
The Rivian vans have at least 100 more cubic feet than the Sprinter and up to double the cargo space of the Ford Transit vans Natividad drove in Las Vegas. Rivian vans are still small enough that they don’t require a special license to drive, though Amazon provides its own training for drivers.
He said one of his favorite features is a light bar “that goes all the way around the back.” He also likes that the windshield is “absolutely massive,” the wide doors allow for easy entry and exit, and the cargo door automatically opens when the van is parked. There are two rows of shelves that fold up and down in the cargo area.
There’s also new technology, such as an embedded tablet with the driving route and a 360-degree view that shows all sides of the van.
Mai Le, Amazon’s vice president of Last Mile, oversaw the testing of the center console and Rivian’s integrated software.
“We did a lot of deliveries as a test,” Le said. “As a woman, I want to make sure that the seats are comfortable for me and that my legs can reach the pedals, I can see over the steering wheel.”
She demonstrated some of the benefits of the new technology.
“When we start to notice that you’re slowing down, that means that we can tell you’re getting near to your destination,” she said. “The map begins to zoom in, so you begin to find where’s your delivery location, which building and where parking could be.”
The new vans have keyless entry. They automatically lock when the driver is 15 feet away and unlock as the driver approaches.
Workers load packages into Amazon Rivian Electric trucks at an Amazon facility in Poway, California, November 16, 2022.
Sandy Huffaker | Reuters
Cameras and safety
Above all else, Amazon says the changes were designed to make the delivery job safer.
A ProPublica report found Amazon’s contract drivers were involved in more than 60 serious crashes from 2015 to 2019, at least 10 of which were fatal. Amazon put cameras and sensors all over the Rivian vans, which enable warnings and lane assist technology that autocorrects if the vehicle veers out of the lane.
Dennis mentioned the importance of automatic braking and the steering wheel that starts “just kind of shaking when you get too close to something.”
“There’s just so many features that would really, really help cut back on some of those incidental accidents,” she said.
Amazon vans have driver-facing cameras inside, which can catch unsafe driving practices as they happen.
“The in-vehicle safety technology we have watches for poor safety behaviors like distracted driving, seat belts not being fastened, running stop signs, traffic lights,” said Beryl Tomay, who helps run the technology side of delivery as vice president of Last Mile for Amazon.
“We’ve seen over the past year a reduction of 80% to 95% in these events when we’ve warned drivers real time,” she said. “But the really game-changing results that we’ve seen have been almost a 50% reduction in accidents.”
As a DSP owner, Dennis gets alerts if her drivers exhibit patterns of unsafe behavior.
“If something with a seat belt or just something flags, then our team will contact the driver and make sure that that’s coached on and taken care of and figured out, like what actually happened,” Dennis said.
That level of constant surveillance may be unsettling for some drivers. Dennis said that issues haven’t come up among her staffers. And Amazon stresses it’s focused on driver privacy.
“We’ve taken great care from a privacy perspective,” Tomay said. “There’s no sound ever being recorded. There’s no camera recording if the driver’s not driving and there’s a privacy mode.”
Amazon says the cabin-facing camera automatically switches off when the ignition is off, and privacy mode means it also turns off if the vehicle is stationary for more than 30 seconds.
Amazon says new technology can help. Drivers can choose to manually notify customers ahead of a delivery, giving them time to restrain pets. Another feature that’s coming, according to Le, will allow drivers to mark delivery locations that have pets.
Natividad said he had multiple close calls with dogs charging at him during deliveries.
“You customers out there, please restrain your dogs when you know a package is coming,” he said. “Please keep them inside. Don’t leave them just outside.”
Optimizing routes
Providing drivers with more efficient and better detailed routes could improve safety, too. Drivers in 2021 told us about losing time because Amazon’s routing software made a mistake, like not recognizing a closed road or gated community. In response, they sometimes tried to save time in other ways.
“People are running through stop signs, running through yellow lights,” said Adrienne Williams, a former DSP driver. “Everybody I knew was buckling their seat belt behind their backs because the time it took just to buckle your seat belt, unbuckle your seat belt every time was enough time to get you behind schedule.”
Amazon listened. The company has been adding a huge amount of detail to driver maps, using information from 16 third-party map vendors as well as machine learning models informed by satellite driver feedback and other sources.
One example is a new in-vehicle data collection system called Fleet Edge, which is currently in a few thousand vans. Fleet Edge collects real-time data from a street view camera and GPS device during a driver’s route.
“Due to Fleet Edge, we’ve added over 120,000 new street signs to Amazon’s mapping system,” Tomay said. “The accuracy of GPS locations has increased by over two and a half times in our test areas, improving navigation safety by announcing upcoming turns sooner.”
Tomay said the maps also added points of interest like coffee shops and restrooms, so in about 95% of metro areas, “drivers can find a spot to take a break within five minutes of a stop.”
In 2021, Amazon apologized for dismissing claims that drivers were urinating in bottles as a result of demanding delivery schedules. Natividad said he occasionally found urine-filled bottles in his vans before his shift in the mornings.
“As soon as I open the van, I’m looking around, I see a bottle of urine. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not touching this,'” he said.
Pay for Amazon drivers is up to the discretion of each individual DSP, although Amazon says it regularly audits DSP rates to make sure they’re competitive. Indeed.com puts average Amazon driver pay at nearly $19 an hour, 16% higher than the national average.
Natividad started delivering for Amazon in 2021 when his gigs as a fulltime disc jockey dried up because of the pandemic. He liked the job at the time, generally delivering at least 200 packages along the same route. However, during the holiday season that year, he once had more than 400 packages and 200 stops in a single shift.
“Towards the end of my day, they sent out two rescues to me to help out to make sure everything’s done before 10 hours,” he said.
Amazon is working to optimize its routes. But it’s an unwieldy operation. The company says it’s generated 225,000 unique routes per day during peak season.
Tomay said the company looks at the density of packages, the complexity of delivery locations “and any other considerations like weather and traffic from past history to put a route together that we think is ideal.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
“Given that we’re in over 20 countries and every geography looks different, it’s not just about delivery vehicles or vans anymore,” Tomay said. “We have rickshaws in India. We have walkers in Manhattan.”
In Las Vegas, Amazon held a roundtable last year for DSP owners and drivers. Natividad says he spoke for 20 minutes at the event about the need for Amazon to improve its routing algorithms.
“I think they should do that probably once a month, with all the DSP supervision and a few of the drivers, and not the same drivers every time. That way different feedback is given. And like seriously listen to them,” Natividad said. “Because they’re not the ones out there seeing and experiencing what we go through.”
Natividad didn’t get to try out the routing technology in the Rivian vans before he left to deliver for USPS in July. He’s excited that the postal service is following in Amazon’s footsteps with 66,000 electric vans coming by 2028.
Amazon, meanwhile, is diversifying its electric fleet beyond Rivian. The company has ordered thousands of electric Ram vans from Stellantis and also has some on the way from Mercedes-Benz.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
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Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.
An Amazon employee works to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images
For 10 years, Aaron Cordovez has been selling kitchen appliances on Amazon. Now he’s in a bind, because most of his products are manufactured in China.
Cordovez, co-founder of Zulay Kitchen, said his company is moving “as fast as we can” to move production to India, Mexico and other markets, where tariffs are increasing under President Donald Trump, but are mild compared with the levies imposed on goods from China. That process will likely take at least a year or two to complete, he said.
“We’re making our inventory last as long as we can,” Cordovez said in an email.
Zulay is alsotemporarily raising the price of some of its milk frothers, smores roasting sticks and other products. The company’s popular kitchen strainer now costs $12.99, up from $9.99 before Trump announced his sweeping tariff proposal earlier this month.
Amazon merchants are hiking prices for everything from diaper bags and refrigerator magnets to charm necklaces and other top-selling items as they confront higher import costs. E-commerce software company SmartScout tracked 930 products on Amazon that have seen increased prices since April 9, with an average jump of 29%.
The price hikes affect a range of categories, including clothing, jewelry, household items, office supplies, electronics and toys.
The trade war with China has threatened to upend sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, which accounts for about 60% of the company’s online sales. Many merchants are based in China or rely on the world’s second-largest economy to source and assemble their products.
Sellers are now faced with the conundrum of raising prices or eating the extra costs associated with Trump’s new tariffs. It’s an existential threat for many sellers, who subsist on razor-thin margins and have, for the last several years, dealt with rising costs on Amazon tied to storage, fulfillment, shipping and advertising fees along with pricing pressure from increased competition.
CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC earlier this month that the company was “going to try and do everything we can” to keep prices low for shoppers, including renegotiating terms with some of its suppliers. But he acknowledged some third-party sellers will “need to pass that cost” of tariffs on to consumers.
Amazon’s stock price is down 15% so far this year, sliding along with the broader market. The company reports first-quarter earnings next week.
Goods imported from China now face import duties of 145%, though Trump said Wednesday his administration is “actively” talking with China about a potential deal to lower tariffs. Chinese officials on Thursday denied that trade talks are taking place.
About 25% of the price increases observed by SmartScout were initiated by sellers based in China, said Scott Needham, the company’s CEO. Last week, stainless steel jewelry maker Ursteel hiked prices on four of its products by $6.50, while apparel brand Chouyatou raised the price of some of its dresses by $2. Both businesses are based in China’s Zhejiang province.
Anker, a Chinese electronics brand and one of Amazon’s largest sellers, has raised prices on one-fifth of its products sold in the U.S., including a portable power bank, which went up to $135 from $110, SmartScout data shows.
Representatives from Anker, Ursteel and Chouyatou didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Zulay, headquartered in Florida, is one of many U.S.-based sellers raising prices. The company is also cutting costs. Cordovez said he’s been forced to lay off 19% of his workforce and slash online ad spending by 85%.
Desert Cactus, based in Illinois, is also taking action. Joe Stefani, the company’s president, has been looking to move production of some of his brand’s college-themed merchandise out of China and into Mexico, India and Vietnam. About half of Desert Cactus’ goods come from China, while the rest are made in the U.S., Stefani said.
An Amazon worker moves a cart filled with packages at an Amazon delivery station in Alpharetta, Georgia, on Nov. 28, 2022.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
One of the company’s top products is a customizable license plate frame that’s manufactured in China. At the start of Trump’s first term in 2016, Stefani’s company paid import and shipping fees of 4% on the license plates. That rate has since skyrocketed to 170%, he said.
“The tariffs can’t stay this high,” Stefani said. “There’s so many people that just aren’t going to make it.”
Stefani said he expects Desert Cactus will end up raising prices on some products, though he’s worried shoppers might be put off by sticker shock.
“Will someone be willing to pay $50 for a hat on Amazon?” Stefani said. “You know it’s going to be expensive at the ballpark, but on Amazon we don’t know.”
Dave Dama, co-founder of health and beauty business Pure Daily Care, said the price to manufacture one of his skin-care products in China jumped to $25 from $10. Most Amazon sellers will have no choice but to raise prices, he said.
“If you were selling something for $40 and making a $7 or $8 profit at the end of the day, with these tariffs, those days are gone,” Dama said. “You can’t do that anymore. It’s unsustainable.”
Pure Daily Care plans to stagger price increases over several weeks, and only on products “we absolutely need to,” to keep Amazon’s algorithms from ranking it lower in search results or losing the valuable buy box, he said. The buy box determines which listing pops up first when a shopper clicks on a particular product, and the one that gets purchased when they tap “Add to Cart.”
An Amazon spokesperson said the company’s pricing policies continue to apply.
“As always, sellers set their own prices, and we regularly monitor how we highlight great prices as Featured Offers to provide customers with low prices across a wide selection,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Dama said his company has enough inventory for some products to last up to six months, which it aims to “stretch as long as possible” in the hope that China and the U.S. can reach a trade deal. The company is also forgoing some sales promotions and discounts, while pausing spend on some display and video ads.
Regarding his inventory, Dama said, “We can try to stretch that seven, eight, nine months, which buys us a lot more time for this thing to work out, hopefully.”