The Iowa City company started during the pandemic as Amazon’s “last mile” delivery service shuts down next month.
GRIT Delivers LLC, which delivered Amazon packages to the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area in Amazon-branded delivery vehicles, has notified the state that it will close on February 5 and lay off 62 employees.
The company’s website has since been taken down, but the former driver described the company on its LinkedIn page as “a logistics company contracted by Amazon to do last-mile deliveries.” Used to mean that the goods are delivered from the nearest distribution center to their final destination, such as your home or business.
Owner Kira Sears-Elliott said the reason for closing GRIT was that “we had other business and chose to close to focus on other tasks,” after the article was published. told Starting Line.
GRIT Delivers was launched just days after Amazon opened a “delivery station” in Iowa City. The shipping stations are smaller than the company’s fulfillment warehouses, but they help speed up delivery times.
Amazon DSP under attack elsewhere
Under a program launched in 2018, Amazon encourages people with $10,000 in startup cash to become its Delivery Service Partners (DSPs). By August 2020, over 1,300 of his DSPs were live in five countries, including GRIT.
However, low wages and poor working conditions compared to other delivery jobs meant that DSP owners had to constantly focus on hiring. (The last few posts on her Facebook page for GRIT, including the last post in October, were job applications.)
Strict rules on van rental and repair costs also impacted company owners’ promised profits, according to a March protocol article.North Carolina DSP owners recently sued Amazon He said he designed the program so that the DSP could not leave unless Amazon forced him out.
Sears-Elliott said that “it was not my experience” doing DSP.
Amy Rivers
1/11/23
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