Amazon driver who delivers '350 parcels a day' reveals the worst people to deliver to
A driver who delivers Amazon parcels has detailed exactly what a typical day is like, opening up about an aspect that's 'absolute chaos'.
On an average shift, Neo Webb says he can deliver up to 350 parcels a day, and in this time, he's dropped off parcels in all sorts of places, so he's developed a pretty clear idea of the hardest people to deliver to.
And while he told LADbible it was 'pretty much everywhere', he was able to narrow it down to a list of the very worst locations.
For his job, standard pay is £130 for a 'route', which is something Amazon calculates each day and needs to be completed within nine-and-a-half hours, otherwise, Neo says, they'll 'kick you off the app and say you need to bring back whatever you've got left'.
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Fortunately, that doesn't typically happen, 'unless it's been a really, really bad day', and as far as Neo is concerned, the quicker he gets through his route the better, aiming to be done in six hours.
'I'm not a bottler'
A standard day sees him make 180 or 190 stops, but that's not taking into account 'multi stops' where there are several properties to deliver to on the same stop, so on some days he's looking at 250 delivery points.
This works out at him earning about 37p for each of his 350 or so parcels.
Neo says he could take a break but prefers not to so he can get through the shift, and he's very clear that he's not a delivery driver who attends to toilet time in the vehicle.
"I don't use the bottle method. I can confirm, I'm not a bottler," he tells us.
However, he says he has 'been in many vans where there's just sort of bottles of p**s sort of hidden around', but his preferred method is to know which pubs are on his route so he can nip into the loo.
As for the worst places to deliver to, he shared three of the big ones any delivery driver doesn't want to be going to.
Schools
Plenty of schools order things off Amazon, and Neo says delivering there could be 'incredibly annoying' since there were often gates to get through and depending on the time of day a driver might also have to contend with 'school traffic, which is absolutely horrific'.
"And then also you've got safety of children," he explains.
"So if it's break time or, I don't know, PE class or children are out then sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes you have to wait and they come down to you that it can be a bit tricky sometimes, schools."
That doesn't sound like much fun, but Neo says schools at least weren't in the absolute 'top bracket' for the places he didn't like delivering to.
Flats
Here we are in what the delivery driver calls the 'top bracket', with Neo saying it was joked among delivery drivers that 'no one on the bottom to middle floors ever orders an Amazon parcel, ever'.
In his experience, 'it will always be the person on the top half of the floors', meaning he's got to go up all sorts of stairs and sometimes multiple buildings are 'grouped into one stop'.
He says: "So it's all the stairs, and you get to these flats, there's probably about six of them all laid out in this little kind of cul-de-sac.
"And then you've got them grouped into one stop, so it's not even separate stops. So you're wasting so much more time.
"You go up, you buzz, no one's answered. Then you've got to buzz a neighbour. But then the neighbours are getting all mad at you because you're buzzing it."
As far as he was concerned, flats were 'one of the worst places to deliver' and he reckons 'everyone would agree on that'.
And Neo says it's a nightmare when 'I've got 180 stops today, and I've got 350 packages, and I can't get into this flat'.
Town centres
However, if delivery drivers could agree big buildings or flats were a nightmare to deliver to, Neo says they're also in agreement that the 'number one, without a shadow of a doubt' is town centres.
On the plus side, a route through a town centre might be shorter at 'maybe 100 stops', but everything else is so much more difficult.
"You've got traffic, you've got all the apartments," he says of the delivery driver's nightmare destination.
"And the thing is with the town centre apartments you have to deliver to every single door because there's more likelihood of parcels getting stolen in mail rooms.
"So you have to kind of change your approach as well."
On top of the residential deliveries that are difficult to access and prone to robbery, are all sorts of businesses and parking in a town centre, which can be a harrowing experience in themselves.
Neo says you've got to 'park somewhere and then drag a big bag through the town centre', which he says is 'absolute chaos'.
The risk of robbery when you leave the van behind to go and make deliveries is tough in a town centre as well, as he said a friend had been making deliveries in the centre of Nottingham and 'his van got robbed twice' after someone got a crowbar and forced open the locked door.
So do spare a thought for them next time you make your next online purchase.
Joe Harker