Quote:
Originally Posted by Catenary
Amazon's last-mile centres often load the vans indoors. This would require multiple ground level doors to drive into and out of the building. The renders only show two, and they're in awkward places more useful for moving the occasional forklift in and out than anything else. There's also no on-site parking for delivery vehicles - there's a staff lot and trailer spaces, but nothing delivery van sized.
This would also be a HUGE facility just to do last-mile, and Amazon doesn't have a last-mile presence in Ottawa. Intelcom does the bulk of their work, and manages that out of a small facility in a light industrial strip mall.
This seems like a proper crossdock facility where trucks are unloaded, items are sorted and warehoused temporarily, generally without any vertical racking, and sent back out again.
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I was suggesting it could be both a sort hub and a delivery van depot, similar to Purolator's Kipling Ave location in Toronto.
Amazon is in the process of opening 2 final mile delivery centres in London. One is a new build that has 2 ground level overhead doors for van access. The other is a retrofit of a building that used to have trailer dock doors down one side, but those are having the grade raised to be bumper height for vans. Lots of courier depots are like that as well. I haven't seen what Amazon did with the building they took over in Cambridge to be a delivery depot, but it was a 140,000 sq ft rectangle with 30 or so loading docks on either side and no doors to drive inside. Intelcom currently is one of the main Amazon service providers in London, along with Canada Post and Purolator, but they are planning to add upwards of 150 of their own delivery routes. Their trend is definitely more and more under their own control, and sort hubs are a necessary part of that.