Walmart is testing program paying employees to deliver online orders on their way home
Online Grocery Pickup and two-day free shipping are saving people tons of time, and our new Pickup Discount is using our massive fleet of trucks to get online orders to stores where customers can pick up items for an additional discount and save even more money.
Now, our latest test is taking this another step further and leveraging one of our greatest assets – our associates – to get online orders to customers’ doors. Why is that a big deal? Not only can this cut shipping costs and get packages to their final destinations faster and more efficiently, it creates a special win-win-win for customers, associates and the business.
It just makes sense: We already have trucks moving orders from fulfillment centers to stores for pickup. Those same trucks could be used to bring ship-to-home orders to a store close to their final destination, where a participating associate can sign up to deliver them to the customer’s house. The best part is this gives our own associates a way to earn extra income on their existing drive home.
Associates are fully in control of their experience. If they don’t want to participate, they don’t have to. If they choose to opt in, we’ve built technology that allows them to set preferences. Associates choose how many packages they can deliver, the size and weight limits of those packages and which days they’re able to make deliveries after work – it’s completely up to them, and they can update those preferences at any time. We also allocate packages based on minimizing the collective distance they need to travel off of their commute to make a delivery.
