Amazon opening new facility in Cary this year to increase speed of deliveries

Amazon continues to invest in its infrastructure to deliver packages in the growing Triangle region, this time opening a new delivery facility in Cary.

The e-commerce giant has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to make more of its packages deliverable in one day’s time. Delivery facilities are a key part of that strategy.

The delivery facilities handle “last-mile logistics” for Amazon, and are smaller than the typical fulfillment centers many people associate with Amazon.

Amazon opened a delivery facility in Durham last year, which was the first in the region, The News & Observer reported.

That facility employed 385 full- and part-time employees, and handled “tens of thousands of packages every day,” James Shively, a regional director of operations for Amazon, told The N&O last year.

“The primary focus of our delivery station is to take boxes that have customer product in it and to put it on vans and ensure it is delivered to customers,” Shively said last year. “Investments into delivery stations like you see here today are one part of us enabling that one-day delivery.”

Jobs at the Cary facility will pay a minimum wage of $15 per hour.

The facility should open later this year, Amazon spokesperson Shone Jemmott said in an email.

Amazon’s gigantic fulfillment center in Garner is also expected to open later this year. That facility will be a 2.6-million-square-foot distribution center on Jones Sausage Road in Garner, and will one day employ up to 1,500 people. (In comparison, the Durham delivery station is around 90,000 square feet.)

Amazon declined to give an address for where the Cary delivery facility will be located.

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate

This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 6:17 PM.