1 day Ago By Stacy Parker
VIRGINIA BEACH — You’ve likely seen them in your neighborhood. Gray vans emblazoned with Amazon’s signature blue curved arrow “smile” and a playful phrase such as: “I’m electric. Boogie woogie woogie.
” The vehicles are the online shopping giant’s first electric fleet in Virginia and are based out of a new Virginia Beach delivery station on Harpers Road. A second massive Amazon building — a robotics fulfillment center across Dam Neck Road — is scheduled to open next year. On Tuesday, the company hosted a ribbon-cutting and tour of the delivery center, which is Amazon’s sixth site in Hampton Roads.
State and local officials attended, including state Sens. Aaron Rouse and Bill DeSteph as well as Mayor Bobby Dyer and City Manager Patrick Duhaney. Tens of thousands of packages move through the delivery center each day, said Cory Clark, senior station manager and a former Navy SEAL.
He described how the delivery process works: Merchandise is brought from warehouses in Richmond and Suffolk to the facility, where it’s sorted and placed on rolling metal racks. Drivers then load the packages into vans and deliver them to customers’ front doors. The service area includes addresses east of Interstate 64.
It takes an hour to sort 5,000 packages, and 25 minutes to load a van. “It’s pretty systematic on the minute,” said Clark. The delivery center contracts with six local delivery companies, which employ 400 people.
An additional 200 people work for Amazon at the delivery center. The minimum starting pay is $19.50 per hour, Clark said.
Same-day delivery service is not provided out of the Virginia Beach facility; rather, most of those orders come from Amazon’s Hampton facility , Amazon spokesperson Sam Fisher said. The highlight of Tuesday’s tour was a close-up look at one of the new electric vans. Mark Dillard, a driver trainer who said he’s 6 feet, 3 inches tall, stood inside the back of the vehicle with room to spare.
Sen. Rouse, who’s an inch taller than Dillard, climbed inside to give it a try, too. The vans are more than 9 feet tall, 8 feet wide and 23 feet long.
They have automated cargo doors, 360-degree cameras and can travel 160 miles on a full charge. The delivery center has more than 100 electric delivery vans and 164 charging ports. Amazon currently uses 20,000 electric vans across the United States and is aiming to have 100,000 of them by 2030.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, [email protected] Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on X (Opens in new window) Most Popular I-64 construction begins later this year.
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