Move over UPS truck: Amazon delivery vans to hit the street

Your Amazon packages, which usually show up in a UPS truck, an unmarked vehicle or in the hands of a mail carrier, may soon be delivered from an Amazon van.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, a señor manager of logistics for Amazon.com, opens the door of an Amazon-branded delivery van at the request of a photographer, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, following a media event in Seattle to announce a new program for entrepreneurs to sign on to use Amazon Prime-branded vans and get support from the company as they form businesses to deliver Amazon packages. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The online retailer has been looking for a while to find a way to have more control over how its packages are delivered. With its new program rolling out Thursday, contractors around the country can launch businesses that deliver Amazon packages. The move gives Amazon more ways to ship its packages to shoppers without having to rely on UPS, FedEx and other package delivery services.

With these vans on the road, Amazon said more shoppers would be able to track their packages on a map, contact the driver or change where a package is left -- all of which it can't do if the package is in the back of a UPS or FedEx truck.

Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations for Amazon.com, talks to reporters, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, in Seattle, at a media event to announce a new program for entrepreneurs to sign on to use Amazon Prime-branded vans and get support from the company as they form businesses to deliver Amazon packages. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Amazon has beefed up its delivery network in other ways: It has a fleet of cargo planes it calls "Prime Air," announced last year that it was building an air cargo hub in Kentucky and pays people as much as $25 an hour to deliver packages with their cars through Amazon Flex.

Recently, the company has come under fire from President Donald Trump who tweeted that Amazon should pay the U.S. Postal Service more for shipping its packages. Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations, said the new program is not a response to Trump, but a way to make sure that the company can deliver its growing number of orders. "This is really about meeting growth for our future," Clark said.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, center, a senior manager of logistics for Amazon.com, demonstrates a package delivery for journalists, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, in Seattle, at a media event for Amazon to announce a new program that lets entrepreneurs around the country launch businesses that deliver Amazon packages. It's another way for Amazon to gain greater control over how its packages are delivered. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Through the program , Amazon said it can cost as little as $10,000 for someone to start the delivery business. Contractors that participate in the program will be able to lease blue vans with the Amazon logo stamped on it, buy Amazon uniforms for drivers and get support from Amazon to grow their business.

Contractors don't have to lease the vans, but if they do, those vehicles can only be used to deliver Amazon packages, the company said. The contractor will be responsible for hiring delivery people, and Amazon would be the customer, paying the business to pick up packages from its 75 U.S. delivery centers and dropping them off at shoppers' doorsteps. An Amazon representative declined to give details on how much it will pay for the deliveries.

Parisa Sadrzadeh, left, a señor manager of logistics for Amazon.com, demonstrates a package delivery for journalists, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at a media event in Seattle to announce a new program for entrepreneurs to sign on to use Amazon Prime-branded vans and get support from the company as they form businesses to deliver Amazon packages. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Olaoluwa Abimbola, who was part of Amazon's test of the program, said that the amount of packages Amazon needs delivered keeps his business busy. He's hired 40 workers in five months.

"We don't have to go make sales speeches," Abimbola said. "There's constant work, every day. All we have to do is show up."

Amazon is adding artificial intelligence visionary Andrew Ng to its board of directors, a move that comes amid intense AI competition among startups and big technology companies.

The Seattle company said Thursday that Ng, a managing director at the Palo Alto, California-based AI Fund, will replace a seat vacated by Judy McGrath, a former CEO of MTV who told Amazon she won't run for reelection.

Ng's AI Fund, which he founded in 2017, invests in entrepreneurs building artificial intelligence companies. Previously, he led AI teams at the Chinese tech company Baidu and Google, where the team he oversaw taught a computer system to recognize cats in YouTube videos without ever being taught what a cat was.

Ng's addition to the board comes as Amazon, like other tech companies, makes massive investments in generative artificial intelligence. The company has invested $4 billion in the San Francisco-based startup Anthropic, which is partnering with Amazon to develop so-called foundation models that underpin generative AI technologies. In the past year, Amazon also rolled out a chatbot for businesses called Q and a generative-AI powered shopping assistant named Rufus.

In an annual shareholder letter released Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy suggested generative AI could be the next big pillar of Amazon's business, joining the company's prominent online marketplace, Prime subscription program and its cloud computing unit, AWS. Jassy wrote that generative AI may be the largest technological transformation since cloud computing, and “perhaps since the internet.”

Meanwhile, other Amazon innovations have encountered some hiccups. The company said last week it was pulling its Just Walk Out technology from Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S. after receiving some customer feedback. Amazon said it was replacing the technology, which allows customers to skip the checkout line, with smart carts that would allow them still to do that but also see their spending in real time.

FILE - In this Friday, July 14, 2017, file photo, computer scientist Andrew Ng poses at his office in Palo Alto, Calif. Amazon announced Thursday, April 11, 2024, that it added artificial intelligence visionary Andrew Ng to its board of directors amid intense AI competition among startups and big technology companies. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)