Bye Bye for now....Amazon

[Browndriver5]

The big picture is they are here, paying a portion of our wages and until this fictional account you speak of comes into play we need all the volume we can get.

Amazon has it too good and everyone knows it. I understand we all need the volume but when does it stop? We are doing them a tremendous favor with the discounts we give them and they are just fine with throwing money at start up companies to ship their stuff. I think we should go up on prices with them because in the long run they will be our biggest competitor especially if they get their act together with delivering their own stuff. Why help someone put you out of business?

 

[jbg77]

I don't think the profit we make off of them is worth it. Amazon is only 5% of our total revenue the discount we give them is just ridiculous. I think we could find a few other customers to replace that 5%

Why not keep them and get that other 5% as well?

 

[Browndriver5]

Why not keep them and get that other 5% as well?

Sure but id like to see how much of that 5% is just from peak season alone

 

[Orion inc.]

Amazon isn't going anywhere. I think it comes in waves depending on where in the US you are.
They're not the cheapest online shopping anymore. With their thin profit margins, they can't keep believing they can offer free or cheap shipping or anything else for that matter. Eventually the race to the bottom for maximum profit catches up to you.

 

[PrimeUPS]

Amazon has it too good and everyone knows it. I understand we all need the volume but when does it stop? We are doing them a tremendous favor with the discounts we give them and they are just fine with throwing money at start up companies to ship their stuff. I think we should go up on prices with them because in the long run they will be our biggest competitor especially if they get their act together with delivering their own stuff. Why help someone put you out of business?

Put us out of business? Do you know your UPS history, at all??

UPS was here long before you. It will be here long after you're gone.

What exactly do you think the "discount" is that Amazon gets that is overly burdensome on the rest of the company?

 

[Brownslave688]

Amazon has it too good and everyone knows it. I understand we all need the volume but when does it stop? We are doing them a tremendous favor with the discounts we give them and they are just fine with throwing money at start up companies to ship their stuff. I think we should go up on prices with them because in the long run they will be our biggest competitor especially if they get their act together with delivering their own stuff. Why help someone put you out of business?

Yep and here's the problem I have. Amazon is too big for us to adjust our staffing on a year to year contract.


If they want the discount sign a 5 year contract. If not fine. We are going to charge you a whole lot more

 

[Brownslave688]

Put us out of business? Do you know your UPS history, at all??

UPS was here long before you. It will be here long after you're gone.

What exactly do you think the "discount" is that Amazon gets that is overly burdensome on the rest of the company?

Their discount is massive. Over 50%.
Your second paragraph is exactly the attitude that sends companies bottoms up.

 

[PrimeUPS]

Their discount is massive. Over 50%.
Your second paragraph is exactly the attitude that sends companies bottoms up.

Do you have a source for that?
Rolling with 50%, how much day over day volume does Amazon provide do you think/know?

My second paragraph is just truth. I'm not saying it will be easy or that we should be complacent. We didn't weather decades of storms by saying we were too big to fail, Casey would slap you silly. However, I don't see Amazon hurting us any time soon in the competitor bracket. DHL tried and they just didn't have the ground infrastructure to do it, now they're marginalized to specific niche services. Logistics on a wide international efficient level is hard to break into.

 

[Browndriver5]

Put us out of business? Do you know your UPS history, at all??

UPS was here long before you. It will be here long after you're gone.

What exactly do you think the "discount" is that Amazon gets that is overly burdensome on the rest of the company?

I know the history of UPS just fine. Do you know anything about profit margin and over head? If I'm paying gas, truck maintenance, health insurance and you $34 an hour what sense does it make at all to deliver all these amazon packages throughout the year adding routes etc to make very minimal profit? We are too big of a company to be Amazons bitch. We should have the upper hand on them if they want to ship stuff with us fine but we aren't going to continue to hurt ourselves just for your 5%. They need us more than we need them

 

[Browndriver5]

Do you have a source for that?
Rolling with 50%, how much day over day volume does Amazon provide do you think/know?

My second paragraph is just truth. I'm not saying it will be easy or that we should be complacent. We didn't whether decades of storms by saying we were too big to fail, Casey would slap you silly. However, I don't see Amazon hurting us any time soon in the competitor bracket. DHL tried and they just didn't have the ground infrastructure to do it, now they're marginalized to specific niche services. Logistics on a wide international efficient level is hard to break into.

If it wasn't over 50% they would be out of business.

 

[TUT]

Removed Comment

 

[TUT]

Repost

 

[Brownslave688]

Do you have a source for that?
Rolling with 50%, how much day over day volume does Amazon provide do you think/know?

My second paragraph is just truth. I'm not saying it will be easy or that we should be complacent. We didn't whether decades of storms by saying we were too big to fail, Casey would slap you silly. However, I don't see Amazon hurting us any time soon in the competitor bracket. DHL tried and they just didn't have the ground infrastructure to do it, now they're marginalized to specific niche services. Logistics on a wide international efficient level is hard to break into.

My source is common sense. Plus it's backed up on here quite a few times. If I had to guess the discount is probably closer to 75% that they get.


It's all about margins. Lower margins kill us at the negotiating table also.

 

[TUT]

I know the history of UPS just fine. Do you know anything about profit margin and over head? If I'm paying gas, truck maintenance, health insurance and you $34 an hour what sense does it make at all to deliver all these amazon packages throughout the year adding routes etc to make very minimal profit? We are too big of a company to be Amazons bitch. We should have the upper hand on them if they want to ship stuff with us fine but we aren't going to continue to hurt ourselves just for your 5%. They need us more than we need them

I believe they are heavily discounted, anyone doing business with them is heavily discounted. It would be for a minimal profit, but extra large jobs are measured in different ways vs standard customers. Being a vendor you are everyone's bitch to some level. USPS is becoming more a factor and they are pulling out of the big 2 as best they can to save even more.

 

[Browndriver5]

And if you knew the history of UPS you would know we really didn't have too much competition until Fed Ex came along and they have slowly gained on us quite a bit. IMO UPS would work a whole hell of a lot better if we focused on what got us too the top and that is servicing customers and not worrying about volume and pushing numbers. UPS would work better if we did downsize a little bit because our damages and everything UPS upper management is doing is ruining our brand.

 

[PrimeUPS]

I know the history of UPS just fine. Do you know anything about profit margin and over head? If I'm paying gas, truck maintenance, health insurance and you $34 an hour what sense does it make at all to deliver all these amazon packages throughout the year adding routes etc to make very minimal profit? We are too big of a company to be Amazons bitch. We should have the upper hand on them if they want to ship stuff with us fine but we aren't going to continue to hurt ourselves just for your 5%. They need us more than we need them

I know plenty about business acumen. I would imagine that whoever sits with Amazon at the table has a good idea of what it costs us to deliver for them. They also know what the volume is like and in which areas. I've seen UPS do VERY FEW things and continue to do them if they didn't make the company money. Herego, even with the hefty discount, I presume we are making money off of them. Now yes, the adage is true - first attempt is profit, second attempt breaks even, and third attempt is a loser. There's a reason why we only do three attempts. Someone has figured that out. I've also seen the massive volume that a few CPU's of Amazon can toss at a sort, probably enough to pay for that sort for the week in a matter of hours. Even at discounted rates. You have to remember, even a odd shape irreg at 100 lbs discounted 50% is still a lot of money.

 

[Browndriver5]

Its like Chik Fila and Zaxbys they are high priced fast food and they are not as large as McDonalds and Burger King but they take care of their employees (at least chik fila does) and they are doing just fine as a company even though they charge out the ass

 

[PrimeUPS]

My source is common sense. Plus it's backed up on here quite a few times. If I had to guess the discount is probably closer to 75% that they get.


It's all about margins. Lower margins kill us at the negotiating table also.

Truth is, we don't know the margins and we don't know the discounts so unless you'd like to become the sales rep and enlighten us; you don't really know.

I do know what I've seen run through centers and sorts and the makeup and quantity of that Amazon volume. I've seen enough go through a sort in an hour to pay you for a year. Benefits. Grievances. Margins and all. If we weren't making money, I highly doubt we would do it. Amazon uses USPS and FedEx as well remember, they flip around all the time based on service and their own accounting. It is a symbiotic relationship. As long as everyone does their part... get the air to the hub on time, origin scans, delivery scans, all the scanning, meet the service commitments, take care of damages early; we'll all make money together!

 

[PrimeUPS]

And if you knew the history of UPS you would know we really didn't have too much competition until Fed Ex came along and they have slowly gained on us quite a bit. IMO UPS would work a whole hell of a lot better if we focused on what got us too the top and that is servicing customers and not worrying about volume and pushing numbers. UPS would work better if we did downsize a little bit because our damages and everything UPS upper management is doing is ruining our brand.

They also didn't have much competition until we launched an airline.
That's how business works, you go after it. They did, we did. It's completely naive to believe we would be the only logistics company. Why do you think we've branched into other services? Ground delivery is only one part of the game and the economics of it aren't very elastic.

 

[Browndriver5]

They also didn't have much competition until we launched an airline.
That's how business works, you go after it. They did, we did. It's completely naive to believe we would be the only logistics company. Why do you think we've branched into other services? Ground delivery is only one part of the game and the economics of it aren't very elastic.

I never said I thought we would be the only shipping company? But we should be crushing Fed Ex, Wal-Mart crushes; Target, Aldi, Publix, Kroger and put K-Mart out of business. None of the above companies are even close to them. Fed Ex is on our heels