[#102] Supply Chain in Numbers - Nov 22, 2021
Amazon opened a 350k sqft facility to manufacture robots, Same-day delivery from 13k DollarTree Stores, 40% of trucking capacity is left on the table, 100 3D homes in Austin, Ryder acquires 7M sqft.
Welcome to “Supply Chain in Numbers.” This newsletter tracks significant digits from the world of the supply chain. Five prominent numbers are published every Monday. If you have any feedback, please send it to me.
$40 million
Amazon opened its 350,000-square-foot robotics facility in Westborough, MA. The facility, which will hire 200 workers, will primarily focus on manufacturing Amazon Robotics “mobile drive units.”. This planned $40 million investment will include offices, labs, and manufacturing space, allowing Amazon to “design, build, program, and ship our robots, all under the same roof.” [Supply Chain Dive]
13,000 stores
Dollar Tree has extended same-day delivery in as little as an hour via Instacart to 7,000 additional stores. The expansion brings Instacart’s delivery service to almost 13,000 Dollar Tree and Family Dollar locations in the contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., representing the majority of the retail chain’s approximately 15,500 stores. Instacart and Dollar Tree first began collaborating last November, when the companies struck a deal for Instacart to begin making same-day deliveries under a pilot involving 275 stores. [Grocery Dive]
40% trucking capacity
Long-haul, full-truckload drivers spend an average of 6.5 hours every workday driving, even though federal safety regulations let them drive for 11 hours a day. This implies that 40% of America’s trucking capacity is left on the table every day. This chronic underutilization problem does not seem to be a function of what the drivers themselves do or don’t do, but rather an unfortunate consequence of conventions for scheduling and processing the pickup and delivery appointments. [MarketWatch]
100 3-D Homes
A major home builder is teaming with a Texas startup to create a community of 100 3-D printed homes near Austin, gearing up for what would be by far the biggest development of this type of housing in the U.S. Lennar Corp. and construction-technology firm Icon are poised to start building next year at a site in the Austin metro area. Icon’s 3-D printed houses use concrete framing instead. Its 15.5-foot-tall printers can build the exterior and interior wall system for a 2,000-square-foot, one-story house in a week. [WSJ]
7 million square feet
Ryder System is acquiring Midwest Warehouse & Distribution System, a Woodridge, Illinois-based provider of warehousing, distribution, and transportation solutions primarily for food, beverage, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Midwest operates nine multi-client and eight dedicated-customer warehouses in five regions, primarily in the greater Chicago area, but also New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. Midwest’s warehouse space totals approximately 7 million square feet and is supported by a company-owned fleet of trucks. [CCJ Digital]