SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — ‘Tis the season of giving and employees at Spokane’s Amazon fulfillment center are hard at work making sure your gifts arrive just in time for the holidays.
Holiday operations currently have employees fulfilling around 500-600,000 packages a day in a warehouse that operates very similar to Santa’s workshop. That’s around 3.5 million items a week.
“Thanksgiving and Black Friday, that week is typically when we see our customer orders start to pick up,” said Mark Stinson, the site lead of Amazon GEG1. “Then through December, to kind of almost Christmas Eve is when we see our customer order heaviness, and we’re shipping as much as we possibly can to deliver.”
During the holiday season, Spokane’s Amazon fulfillment center carries around 40 million items of inventory.
“The goal is having as much inventory available on site for customers to have available close to them when they do click buy on the website,” Stinson said.
Once you click buy, your order eventually populates on an employee’s screen. Then, like Christmas magic, robots full of inventory bring your items up for the employee to scan and place into bins. The gifts you purchase can travel through up to 25 miles of conveyor belt before being packed and sent on their way to the slam process. This is a machine that labels your package before it gets sorted.
Once sorted, your package is finally ready to be loaded and sent on its way to your doorstep.
To protect your package from package thieves, Amazon’s number one tip is to use its app or website to track your package in real time so you can know when it’s getting close.
RELATED: Spike in package thefts prompts Spokane Police to offer holiday safety tips
For more information on protecting yourself from package theft, click here.
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