MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota. Online sales on Black Friday increased this year. Fortune reports that the number of people buying online grew by 24%. Reports show that foot traffic in traditional retail stores decreased by 1%. While this may not be a big dip, it still isn’t clear whether consumers were actually purchasing at the stores or were just browsing. Data will arrive later. Stores that are based mainly online need to keep their customers interested, especially if they want them coming back time and time again to help grow the business. Using such resources as Salesforce can help achieve this, satisfying the customer as well as the business.
Regardless of what the sales numbers ultimately reveal, one thing is for sure. American consumers are using online shopping to make more of their holiday purchases than ever before. According to CNN Money, 59% of American shoppers indicated that they planned to buy online this year. For traditional brick and mortar stores, this means that the majority of shoppers will be getting goods delivered this year. The incentive to order online has been drastically raised by improved delivery times. Using courier software has been held partly responsible for this. While this impacts brick and mortar retailers and could possibly re-shape the American suburban and urban landscape through closed stores and layoffs, it also has an impact on the traffic in our communities.
With more people ordering online, we are bound to see more large delivery trucks in our neighborhoods. More trucks mean a greater risk of truck accidents and crashes. The convenience of online shopping, where goods are delivered to your doorstep, hides the hidden processes that happen behind the scenes to make such a delivery possible. Truck drivers may put in longer holiday hours. Mistakes might be made. But where would we be without the services of trucking companies? These concerns do pose the risk of overshadowing the need in our modern age for freight and shipping inland as it is essential to some areas of the country not on the coast getting the goods they want and need. And, of course, it’s key for businesses in America reaching out to a wider base of customers, like those in Canada, with cross-border shipping like the services CSA Transport offers – find out more about this here: https://www.csatransportation.com/contact/trucking-montreal-qc.
And, while you might think that big retailers like Amazon are using the postal service, UPS, and other qualified delivery services, a recent investigative report shed light on Amazon Flex. Gizmodo recently reported that many Amazon deliveries are sent by contractors driving their own cars. These drivers are considered independent workers, which means that they may not be subject to the same hours of service laws that UPS drivers or U.S. Postal Service Drivers must follow. While Amazon limits its own drivers to 40 hours, there are no labor laws on the books that prevent these same drivers from then logging a full days’ work for Uber or UberEats, or prevents them from picking up a shift. This means that tired, underpaid, and possibly uninsured drivers could be delivering your gifts to your door. This certainly wouldn’t happen with drivers from TS Europe, which is a company that deals in european road freight. Why uninsured? Like Uber drivers, Amazon’s contract drivers may not be aware that their private insurance policy won’t cover them for commercial activities. If they get into a crash, the driver himself or herself may have to pay. Critics of Amazon claim that the system violates labor laws. However, Amazon Flex, unlike Uber or Lyft, remains largely hidden from the public eye. We see the people driving us around in Uber. We seldom see the woman or man delivering our package after hours.
Uber Flex gives Amazon a flexible workforce that they may not keep on when the holiday season is over. The drivers, who work for themselves as independent contractors, bring deliveries from shipping centers to homes, covering the last few miles of a package’s journey from the facility to your home. Amazon uses its own application similar to Uber to assign deliveries. Gizmodo reports that Amazon Flex drivers may receive little to no training and the vetting process for drivers is outsourced to another company whose processes are unclear. When drivers get into accidents, victims may struggle to recover damages, especially if a driver’s insurance invalidates their policy.
So, what can you do if you’ve been in an accident with an uninsured driver or with a driver whose car insurance policy won’t pay out? The Law Office of Martin T. Montilino is an auto accident lawyer in Minneapolis, Minnesota that works with car accident victims. Visit our firm at https://martinmontilino.com/ to learn more.