DESSA JARMON HAS
A FULL-TIME JOB,
THREE KIDS, AND AN
UNFINISHED TATTOO.
INSIDE THE CUTTHROAT WORLD OF AMAZON FLEX64 MONEY.COM MARCH^2019
So while she’d love to spend her free time
hanging out at home, the 42-year-old heads
out in her Jeep Cherokee on nights and
weekends to deliver Amazon packages for
extra cash. Her earnings go toward the
family’s bills—and paying for the occasional
session to get more bees, flowers, and
honeycombs inked onto her arm.
Jarmon is a driver for Amazon Flex, a
service in which independent contractors take
delivery routes to supplement UPS, FedEx,
and the postal service. Similar to Uber or
grocery delivery service Instacart, Amazon
Flex allows people to set their own schedule
and use their own vehicles. Drivers say the
freedom is nice, and at peak times (like the
holidays), the rates are especially high: $124
for four hours of work in Tennessee, $90 for
three in Florida, $36 for two in Michigan.
On a recent Saturday in Tacoma, Jarmon
took her first-ever shift, called a “block.”
After passing a background check and
watching a series of best-practices videos,
she grabbed a flashlight and a bag of dog
treats and got to work.
“I decided, what the hell, let’s give it a
try,” she says. “After driving Uber Eats that
morning, where I was on for 2½ hours and
made $25, I worked a four-hour block and
made $76.”
Although cruising around and placing
boxes on doorsteps may sound easy, getting
jobs is not. The service has been growing
steadily since Amazon introduced it in 2015,
and the competition for this side-hustle cash
is hitting workers from all different angles.
There are only so many packages; there areonly so many routes. Jobs vary wildly in
availability and difficulty, especially when
box-thieving porch pirates, winding
country roads, and overzealous guard
dogs are involved. As word spreads about
Flex, drivers are increasingly being
forced to compete against one another—
and the system—in order to make a
steady income.
“We’re all doing the same thing,”
says Christian Theurer, who runs
flexdrivertips.com. “We’re all constantly
searching and searching and refreshing
our screens to get the next block.”SWIPE, TAP,
DRIVE, DELIVER
N ORDER TO JOIN FLEX, a
person must be 21 or older,
have a license, and drive a
vehicle that can fit several
packages at once. Drivers also need an
Android or an iPhone, because the whole
system is based around an app.
When they’re ready to work, Flexers
log on by opening that app and scrolling
through a list of blocks available for the
next 24 hours. Deliveries are clustered by
area and include packages from Amazon
.com, Prime Now, and AmazonFresh
along with orders from Whole Foods,
other stores, and some restaurants. Each
block covers a certain time period—say,
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.—and comes with an
offer price.
Drivers can also use an in-app
calendar to indicate their availability and
receive offers, but that method seems to
be less popular.
Flexers checking for available blocks
need to be fast, because those are first
come, first served. Another caveat: The
payout is guaranteed, but the amount of
physical labor is not.
“When I take a block of time at
Amazon, I know I’m going to be earning
that much money,” Seattle driver Cory
Moll, 37, says. “The unknown of Amazon
Flex is how much work is going to be a
part of that block. A block could have only