The days — plural — of waiting for packages ordered online are quickly coming to a close as several of the most prominent online retailers are leading the charge to make same-day delivery a reality. According to Forbes magazine, Amazon and other retailers are flexing their industry clout and expertise to reset consumer expectations around how long it should take to receive a package. Amazon, especially, has made grand steps to reach this milestone and their same-day deliveries continue to grow as they add more distribution centers and improve their logistics.
In its essence, same-day delivery isn't a complicated idea. According to Time Magazine, Amazon simply has the massive scale required to build warehouses in major cities that give them a feasible distance to work with. Once an order is placed, they then use a sophisticated algorithm, honed with decades of fulfillment experience, to give the warehouse picker the best route to find all of the items needed to get the order out the door almost immediately. Having that edge allows for issues that might come up with local delivery services or, in the case of one-hour shipping, even traffic jams.