An inside look at Prime Day from a key Amazon delivery center in Dallas-Fort Worth

To Amazon customers, the company’s annual Prime Day members-only sale lasting two days means a simple click of a “buy” button.

To Amazon workers in Lewisville, it’s showtime.

The company’s distribution center there is often the final stop an item makes before arriving at a customer’s house, said Amazon spokesman Scott Seroka on Tuesday, as packages moved through the facility en route to homes in Dallas-Fort Worth.

In all, the Lewisville facility will handle and deliver roughly 172,000 packages Tuesday and Wednesday.

Business Briefing

Become a business insider with the latest news.

Email Address

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

SUBMIT

“This is the Super Bowl for us,” said Daniel Martin, another Amazon spokesman.

After a customer places an order, the item is picked in a fulfillment center by Amazon’s associates and robots and brought to facilities like the one in Lewisville. The package is then loaded into a tote to the delivery van and sent out to the customer’s home.

Hugo Morillo, Amazon senior regional director, said each tote gets sorted through Amazon’s software and algorithms. Amazon’s navigation system will then plan the most efficient route for drivers to follow.

“All the planning and forecasting comes together on these days,” Martin said.

Months of preparation go into the event. Now in its eighth year, Prime Day was created in 2015 as a way for Amazon to attract new subscribers to its Prime service, which offers shipping discounts, video streaming and other perks for $139 a year. It’s since become one of the biggest retail events of the year, with other competitors matching Amazon’s midsummer deal-fest.

Worldwide, shoppers will spend an estimated $12.9 billion during the event, up about 11% from last year, according to Insider Intelligence.

The day has become such a phenomenon, Numerator follows Prime Day through a live tracker. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, the average sales order was $56.26, up about 8% from the same period last year. Over half of households shopping on the first day had already placed two or more orders.

“This is what we live for in operations. We’ve been planning this for months. It’s always busy here, but the big difference is the increase in volume,” Morillo said. “We’ve needed to increase hiring and do a lot of training and forecasting ahead of time to ensure that packages are delivered safely and on time.”

Prime Day causes gameday changes at facilities like the one in Lewisville.

“It takes about 10 minutes at the beginning of the shift where we greet employees and talk about what to expect on the job for the day,” Martin said. “Tomorrow, it’ll be a different message because our volume will be bigger, which will require more activity and for us to go into overdrive.”

In Lewisville, typically around 60,000 packages will be delivered to people within approximately a 20-mile radius consisting of 250 routes for drivers. However, at its peak, on the second day of Prime Day, Martin said that number will increase to about 80,000 packages on 315 routes for drivers.

The Lewisville facility employs around 200 people and hired 50 new employees in recent months primarily for Prime Day. Seroka said the hirings will carry over into other big seasons like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Amazon has invested over $41 billion in Texas since 2010 on infrastructure and compensation for employees. The company has also added nearly $50 billion to Texas’ state GDP and 90,000 full- and part-time jobs to the state, Martin said.

Texas is second only to California in terms of Amazon employment. The state also makes up 40,000 of Amazon’s 1.7 million small- and medium-sized businesses, which account for 60% of everything sold on the company’s website.

“We’re really proud of the way that we’ve been able to integrate small- and medium-sized businesses into our inventory and to customers who may have never reached them,” Martin said. “I think we saw a lot of businesses that were almost forced to close who turned to online retailers like Amazon, and it helped them keep their doors open.”

Rivian has also built 5,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon, 70 of which are located at the Lewisville facility.

Some 15,000 Rivian vans will be on the road by the end of the year and a total of 100,000 are expected to be deployed by the end of 2030. So far, the vans have delivered over 150 million packages for Amazon.

DC Foster, Amazon’s Dallas-based global head of vehicle engineering, manufacturing and quality, said the vehicles’ state-of-the-art technology sets them apart from the rest. The vans can travel up to 150 miles on a single charge and are equipped with safety features like lane assist and rear alerts.

“This is our first major milestone toward our commitment to the climate pledge,” Foster said. “The investment was into the environment, and while we were doing that, we took advantage of also investing in safety.”

Inside the Lewisville facility, thousands of boxes scurried down conveyor belts Tuesday as employees’ bright yellow-green safety vests stood out amid a sea of gray walls and brown boxes.

Outside, a scene unfolded that resembled an airport when a plane is about to take off. Hundreds of Amazon vehicles lined up with drivers at the wheel awaiting their first of many deliveries for the day.

“It’s a logistical symphony here,” Martin said.