Amazon’s New St. Cloud Delivery Station Up and Running

ST. CLOUD -- It may not be Santa's workshop, but it's the closest thing you'll find in central Minnesota.

Amazon opened its brand-new delivery station in St. Cloud last month. Delivery stations are the final stops in Amazon's transportation network before packages are delivered to your doorstep.

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Nick Lahti is the Site Manager at the new St. Cloud facility. He says a typical day starts early.

We short out at 2:30 a.m. until about 7:15 a.m. Then at about 7:45 a.m. our staff are picking and staging the package in our loading areas. Finally we are loading and dispatching the first wave of trucks at around 8:40 a.m.

The St. Cloud Delivery Station has roughly 48 delivery trucks that are loaded, as well as "flex " drivers that are sent off across the area before noon.

Iftin Hussein is with Quality Express Inc., the delivery company Amazon partners with to ship out packages. He says every day they are adding new routes to keep up with the demand.

We started out with 10 routes, yesterday we did about 20 routes and today we are running 70 routes due to the increase volume from Amazon.

Mahat Hussan is a delivery driver with Quality Express Inc. He says working as a driver has helped him experience more of central Minnesota.

What Amazon does, which I like, if they see you are doing well with your routes in a certain area they will assign you that area again which helps you get to know the areas and communities even more.

The St. Cloud location is currently operating at about 25% capacity and delivery routes cover the heart of central Minnesota from Rice, to Albany to Cold Spring.

Lahti says once they get more established they will begin to ramp up their operations and increase the number of packages and driver to better serve the surrounding communities.

This is the first delivery station in Minnesota outside of the Twin Cities Metro Area.

Amazon is currently looking to hire more employees and delivery drivers. Details can be found at www.amazon.com/apply.