Work continues on the new “middle mile” facility being built for Amazon in Rensselaer County, but the company recognizes a discrepancy between consumer demand and warehouse capacity.
Not far from Amazon’s 1 million square foot fulfillment center, which opened in 2020, outside Schodack’s Routes 9 and 20, the facility will be part of the e-commerce giant’s logistics network.
The “Middle Mile” center, which is primarily served by 18-wheeled vehicles, collects ordered items from inventory locations far from the “First Mile” and integrates them into geographically organized luggage before the last. Ships to the mileage delivery station. Customer’s hand.
The Schodack facility operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, covering approximately 280,000 square feet on 56 acres. Scannell Properties, an Indiana real estate developer, protects the site and oversees the project, similar to the nearby Amazon fulfillment center.
The facility’s facilities include parking for more than 400 employees, 78 dockside loading bays, and nearly 300 truck trailer parking bays. An Amazon representative told the city that the workers worked 24 hours a day, with a part-time 4-hour to 6-hour shift.
However, at a conference call in the first quarter of April, company executives said a pandemic struggle to meet product demand by rapidly expanding Amazon’s distribution network to “sizing the right size” of capacity. I admitted that I was working hard.
“”[W]Analysts consciously decided with Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky in 2020 and early 2021 that space would not be a business constraint.
Now that demand is stable, “there is an opportunity to better match our capacity to demand,” he said.
Part of this strategy seems to be canceling or delaying the installation.
For example, Rochester Media reported last week that a distribution center of about 3 million square feet in the suburban Gates, which is scheduled to open in September, has been postponed until next year. A half-mile facility near Ogden, about the size of the planned Shodak Center, may be more suspicious.
Earlier this month, the Modern Shipper industry newsletter listed 16 warehouses nationwide that Amazon canceled or postponed.
Marc Wulfraat, founder and president of Montreal-based supply chain consultancy MWPVL International, which maintains an online database of Amazon facilities around the world, said he had never heard of rumors about the new Schodack hub.
He said Amazon had only two half-mile locations left on Staten Island, near Buffalo, New York. The former can handle upstates from the west of Syracuse, and Staten Island can serve downstates.
However, Schodack said, “It’s important to effectively serve the Albany market.”
“We have 900,000 people in Greater Albany, so I think it’s too big to delay,” Wulfraat said. “This type of facility is important for Amazon to support its own last mile delivery and enable night and two-day delivery service levels.”
An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the Schodack site.
Marlene Kennedy I’m a freelance columnist. The opinions expressed in your column are your own, not necessarily the opinions of the newspaper.Join her [email protected]..
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Category: Business, Opinion