Walmart employees can double as delivery drivers

US – The retailer is allowing its staff to use their own cars to deliver products in exchange for extra pay.

The pilot scheme is being tested at three Walmart stores in New Jersey and Arkansas in a bid to reduce delivery costs. Employees plot their journey home on an app that uses an algorithm to find the most efficient route. All participants are subject to a background and vehicle check before qualifying as a delivery driver.

The scheme will enable Walmart to distribute products faster than its typical second-day delivery pledge, enabling it to compete with e-commerce mega-systems such as Amazon.

‘This is very different from crowd-sourced delivery,’ says Marc Lore, CEO of e-commerce operations at Walmart. ‘It pulls out a tremendous amount of time from that last mile [the final delivery stage is the most expensive stage for retailers], which pulls out a tremendous amount of cost.’