Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 398 posts

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#341

Post by dlubarov »

obmelvin wrote: post #330
dlubarov wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that Fedex and especially UPS trucks are very highly optimized for their work and for fuel efficiency and that their routes are also extremely optimized (for example, UPS truck routes almost never include a left turn). Apparently UPS trucks get around 10 mpg [1]. Not many consumer vehicles are that inefficient. I'd be surprised if UPS's ORION is better at route optimization than a consumer app l…

UPS truck also carries a hell of a lot more than your average employee is going to put in his car and on delivery-dense routes MPG isn't a great signal for efficiency

UPS trucks carry lots of packages so that they don't have to reload at the warehouse mid-day. That's not really a concern for Walmart employees, since they wouldn't be making any special trips to the store to load up on packages.

True, UPS has the advantage of denser delivery routes. But I'm sure Walmart has done the analysis and determined that they can deliver (some) packages more cost-efficiently than UPS despite this. Same with Amazon, which has been hiring their own couriers in some areas.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#342

Post by addicted »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #5

> Workers can opt in to earn extra money by making deliveries using their own cars. They’re assigned packages based on where they live so the route aligns with their commute home The headline makes it sound coercive but that actually sounds like an efficient use of time and energy (less big trucks on the road, less miles driven, more money for people who want it). I wouldn't mind dropping a few things off on my way h…

This is much better than Uber and the likes which don't make you employees and therefore don't cover anything other than the straight hourly payment.

Unlike Uber, whose greatest contribution yet is allowing me to use an app to hail a black cab instead of a phone, this is actually a smart innovation that leverages the fact that employees actually drive home.

If it was a startup I bet a bunch of critical comments would have been supportive instead.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#344

Post by lkjasdsdf7877 »

SilasX wrote: post #60
leggomylibro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. I think that this sort of attitude (which was my initial reaction too) is a big part of what's wrong with our current economy. If you take the concept at face value, this is Walmart offering to let their employees make some extra money in exchange for a bit of extra work, once they've clocked out. What a nice company. But realistically, this is Walmart shunting the costs of delivery onto their employees. Instead…

You don't think you're jumping the gun here, maybe? Do you even know what the compensation will be? >Instead of paying their employees a living wage, or offering benefits befitting a delivery driver, Obviously you can criticize Walmart's current practices. The issue is whether this policy is any worse than what they had before. >they can offset all of the risk, deprecation costs, etc associated with delivering a pack…

Don't be naive; it's the Walton's and a corporation with one of the worst track records of abuse towards their employees.

They have highly paid number crunchers figuring this out.

HN exists in a decision bubble because they're not party do it.

Guaranteed this is the cheapest option and they'll use the Uber model of letting the employee swing in the breeze if things go wrong for them.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#345

Post by lkjasdsdf7877 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #213
SilasX wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent meant in the area where Walmart etc are paying that wage .

Okay, then since the Walmart employees are still alive, the answer is yes. They can live on $40/day. As an added bonus, they have a higher standard of living than the vast majority of humans on the planet.

If by living you mean "Spend their lives smashing rocks for someone else in exchange for minimum of roof+food and no ability to go explore life for themselves."

Pretty self-aggrandizing to sit at your computer and claim these folks are gonna be just fine.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#346

Post by williamscales »

anigbrowl wrote: post #295
api wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately I think this comes down to the paradox of thrift. You want everything as cheap as possible, which means you want everyone else to not belong to a union. But you want to be paid as much as possible, so you want to belong to a union. Your economic self-interest would be maximized if you were the only unionized person on Earth... but of course that's impossible. It's not just "corporate greed." I mean that de…

Everyone wants everything cheap. A popular assertion, but one which ignores the demonstrable willingness of people to pay more at places like farmer's markets or shop at stores that don't always offer the lowest prices or widest selection. Since many people willingly make sacrifices on either price or convenience, you're arguing from a flawed premise.

Alternately, it is a good assertion but the interpretation of cheap is wrong.

Cheap should be defined in a way that is inclusive of all the costs, both monetary and non-monetary societal costs. Then I think everyone does want everything cheap - this is just a statement that nobody likes waste.

But it's just word games. It would be better if we did away with these pernicious generalizations.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#347

Post by dboreham »

dlubarov wrote: post #339
CamperBob2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The no-left-turns rule isn't crude, it's an incredibly valuable (and incredibly obvious) optimization. A mapping service that tells me to turn left in downtown San Francisco at rush hour is literally worse than useless. In many cases, if I follow its directions blindly, not only will I be delayed, I'll delay the traffic around me. It's mind-boggling that Google, Apple, and other consumer-grade routing providers haven…

It's crude because it's too general. Making three right turns might be the right choice on a busy street in SF, but on a side street in a quiet suburb, making a single left is normally the better choice.

For me it would also need to know the date because it is reasonable to make a left turn in winter but not in summer.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#348

Post by revelation »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #313
dlubarov wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that Fedex and especially UPS trucks are very highly optimized for their work and for fuel efficiency and that their routes are also extremely optimized (for example, UPS truck routes almost never include a left turn). Apparently UPS trucks get around 10 mpg [1]. Not many consumer vehicles are that inefficient. I'd be surprised if UPS's ORION is better at route optimization than a consumer app l…

not many consumer cars carry as much weight as a ups truck. I am not sure looking at their mpg tells the whole story.

Weight is dwarfed by aerodynamics. These get shitty MPG because they are shitty technology, made possible only by lax emissions controls and fossil fuel subsidies.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#349

Post by pfarnsworth »

baby_wipe wrote: post #323
rectang wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't assume people are stupid just because they work for Walmart. The difference between the two parties is information asymmetry, not intelligence. Walmart is organized and concentrated and can bring to bear entire departments of lawyers and analysts. It gets to repeat the transaction N times and amortize its costs across all the transactions. The individual workers do not have such resources and are not uni…

If Walmart really is taking advantage of its workers, then why doesn't another company come in and offer better terms? Are you claiming Walmart has monopsony power over low-wage workers?

They have. The reason why Walmart had to raise wages is directly because of this. Walmart was looked upon as the employer of last resort and it was showing in the cleanliness of the stores. The stores were a mess and turnover was huge. Eventually the paymasters had to relent and open the purse strings.

Re: Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home

#350

Post by dominotw »

timthelion wrote: post #294
dominotw wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>forcing walmart to pay their employees more could lead to them making less profit and the poor being better off. What's stopping them from passing on costs to consumers, given they have eliminated all competition in large parts of the country.

The same thing stopping them from rasing prices right away without any change in the law.

walmart and target pay the same wages.
Post reply on HN