Knoxville’s Amazon delivery station means shorter wait times and more jobs

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – WVLT News got an inside look at Amazon’s Knoxville delivery station on Monday, offering more details on how the largest online storefront is operating in the Scruffy City.

Amazon’s latest East Tennessee takes up the footprint of what was once East Towne Mall, joining a similar center in Alcoa.

Monday, delivery center representatives spoke with WVLT News, outlining how the facility is impacting Amazon customers all over East Tennessee.

According to Site Lead TJ Martinez, the biggest impact for people in East Tennessee will be shorter delivery times.

“I think from a lot of the associates, even from a personal standpoint, it took about two, three or four days to get a package here in Knoxville. On the first day we launched, it was a one-day or two-day delivery.”

The center doesn‘t just serve people in Knoxville, however. The online shopping giant is also using the center to cater to more rural customers. Another Amazon representative, Senior Manage of Economic Development Jessica Breaux, said expanding Amazon’s delivery network is key as the business sees continued growth and more customers.

“The closer we can get to the customer, the better their experience is with ordering from Amazon,” she said. “As we were building out our delivery network across the state of Tennessee, we certainly wanted to make sure we were giving that same ability and same opportunity to our customers in eastern Tennessee.”

The facility also means Amazon is acting as a major employer in the Knoxville area. Amazon has around 250 employees working at the old East Towne Mall location now and plans to expand that to more than 300 in the future.

Those employees have a lot of packages to handle. On average, Amazon ships anywhere from 45,000 to 50,000 packages a day, and that number can almost double during the holiday season. To keep up with demand, Martinez said the facility is using new technology.

“With our new automation, ATDA, system we’re able to have 99.9% quality where were focused on a slam label,” he said. “Once that’s scanned, it’s going to be 99.9% correct.”

That‘s not all, however. Another Knoxville business — Shane Stanifer‘s TC4 Logistics — is seeing some action as well. TC4 Logistics is one of a dozen contractors hired by Amazon; the business handles many of the deliveries out of the facility.

“In a matter of months, we’ve gone from no business to having a business, to having 70 drivers on the road every week,” Stanifer said.

With holiday season looming, Amazon is still looking to hire around 1,000 seasonal workers at its Knoxville and Alcoa locations.

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