An anti-warehouse sign overlooking a plot of land that would be used for new warehouses. Kelsey Neubauer/Insider On a hot evening in late August, residents of a small community in eastern Pennsylvania packed into the local firehouse for a meeting that could change the face of their quiet, rustic home. An Atlanta developer named Core5…
Monthly Archives: October 2022
The incident occurred aboard a Norwegian Boeing 737 (Note, this picture is not the plane involved). NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty A flight attendant was badly hurt when his plane was hit with turbulence during its descent. The attendant broke his ankle in two places during the July 2021 incident on a Norwegian flight. Turbulence…
Brendan Heegan. Courtesy of Brendan Heegan This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brendan Heegan, the 45-year-old founder of Boxzooka. Insider has verified his business’ growth with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity. As a third-party logistics- and fulfillment-service provider, Boxzooka was deemed by government bodies to be an…
A robot sorting and stacking bins at an Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California, on August 31, 2021. MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images As a new workday dawns in the warehouse, workers take their places around the floor to start their shifts. So, too, do their mechanical counterparts: Robots roll away from the…
Amazon workers at the LDJ5 Amazon Sort Center rallying in support of the union on April 24 on Staten Island, New York. Chris Smalls successfully organized the JFK8 Amazon Fulfillment Center across the street, making it the first Amazon plant to unionize. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images The first thing Daniel Olayiwola typically does when he clocks…
A delivery hub for the ultrafast delivery company Gorillas in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is one of many so-called “dark stores.” Erika Ramirez/Insider Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, was walking around the Upper West Side last fall when she noticed several new grocery stores in the neighborhood. They stood out, not because they had flashy signs…
As warehousing spreads across the US — and warehouse work becomes one of the dominant forms of blue-collar employment — Blackstone and Prologis increasingly control how America gets its stuff. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images At the turn of the century, warehouses were like the bonds of the commercial-real-estate world: safe, predictable, and a little boring. But…
The ways to ship a bag of dog food, or anything else, are so numerous and varied that an industry of software companies exists just to help chart those paths. Dozens of logistics companies focus on moving boxes via planes, trains, trucks, and vans through nearly infinite routes. Crystal Cox/Insider Delivery drivers hate moving dog…
A Ukrainian man in a tank in a newly liberated village in Ukraine’s Kherson region on October 7, 2022. Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Ukraine is edging closer to Kherson in its counteroffensive, and Russia says a fight is close. The city was the first Russia took, and losing it would be a huge…
“There are strong connections between the hardships of the job — including the productivity monitoring and algorithmic control of their work — and psychological distress,” Steven Vallas, a professor of sociology at Northeastern University, says of warehouse work. “There’s an alienated feeling toward one’s job.” Ralph D. Freso/Reuters Never in its history — perhaps even…