What would you do with a warehouse that is as big as 28 football fields?
Well, when you’re the web’s largest retailer, why would you not have one million square foot warehouses that could hold more water than 10,000 Olympic pools?
When you ship hundreds of millions of products, it’s what you need. And Amazon.com does just that.
Now for the first time ever, Amazon the website where you can virtually buy anything on, just announced they are giving tours at six of their 37 warehouses in the United States, known as fulfillment centers.
Tours will happen the first and third Tuesdays of each month at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Five out of the six locations are already booked until 2015.
Inside Amazon Fulfillment Centers
Amazon’s warehouse centers are entitled fulfillment centers, because they believe their warehouses are meant to “fulfill customer’s orders”.
In addition to fulfilling customer’s needs, they ensure that their thousands of employees at each center are working in a safe environment.
Hired more than 20,000 full-time warehouse employees last year.
Comprehensive benefits, including health care and stock awards, are given to Amazon employees starting the first day on the job according to Amazon’s website.
Their website emphasizes that their warehouses are “safer than a department store” with the following recordable incident rates:
- 51% lower than general warehousing
- 48% lower than automotive manufacturing
- 37% lower than overall manufacturing
- 33% lower than department stores
Where is all started
You might be surprised to find out where a company with multiple warehouses larger than 700 Madison Square Gardens began. In 1994, after raising $1 million, CEO Jeff Bezos moved to Seattle and started Amazon in his garage. Amazon went from a 400,000 square foot garage to two warehouses equaling 300,000 square feet in 1997 and then to 50 warehouses worldwide equaling 25 million square feet in 2011. Though Amazon was originally intended as an online bookstore, it blew up from there into an online one-stop shop for everything, and continues to grow as the #1 selling e-tailer in the world.
Schedule a tour
Schedule a tour today to find out what really happens behind the scenes of clicking “place your order” and see what it takes to operate an Amazon warehouse beyond the many boxes, forklifts, and forklift ramps.
The six centers providing tours are located in the following cities:
- Chattanooga, TN
- Chester, VA
- Jeffersonville, IN
- Middletown, DE
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Bernardino, CA
To schedule a tour, click here.
Check out a short preview of Amazon Fulfillment Centers:
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