Mercedes-Benz said that Amazon has ordered 20,000 Sprinter vans from its newly opened assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C.
Amazon said the vans will be used by “delivery service partners,” independent contractors that employ drivers to make final-mile deliveries of packages for Amazon.
The Seattle Times reported that the order is a quadrupling of Amazon’s original plan to order 4,500 vans. The company told the newspaper that it will not own the vans itself, but that fleet-management companies will buy the trucks and lease them to contractors that have gone through Amazon’s training process.
Amazon said over time it plans to use hundreds of small business owners with tens of thousands of delivery drivers in the United States. That could reduce Amazon’s reliance on other delivery companies such as UPS and FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service.
When Amazon announced the program in June, it said contractors in its delivery service partner program would have access to discounts on equipment and supplies it has negotiated, including Amazon-branded delivery vehicles, uniforms, fuel and insurance.