WSJ: Amazon Hires Unsafe Trucking Companies Twice as Often as Competitors

A recent report from the Wall Street Journal claims that e-commerce giant Amazon hired known dangerous trucking companies twice as often as its competitors.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon uses a huge network of delivery services to transport merchandise around the U.S. But many of the trucking firms that it has hired for its deliveries are reportedly more dangerous than other companies. The companies include one whose driver was found with a crack pipe after running an Amazon trailer into a ditch in Minnesota and was convicted of driving while under the influence of narcotics.

Another driver contracted by Amazon was involved in a fatal accident in Canada, losing control of his vehicle while braking just two months after his employer ignored orders by police to fix the truck’s brakes. A third driver at another Amazon contracted firm had two crashes during a single trip between Amazon warehouses, careening across a Wyoming highway into an oncoming truck, killing its driver.

All three of the companies contracted by Amazon reportedly raised red flags at the U.S. Transporation Department, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. Between February 2020 and early August 2022, over 1,300 Amazon trucking contractors received scores worse than the level at which DOT officials typically take action, according to the WSJ.

Trucking contractors that worked for Amazon were more than twice as likely as all other similar companies to receive unsafe driving scores, according to the WSJ. Approximately 39 percent of the regular Amazon contractors in the WSJ analysis received scores at that level. Trucking firms that worked for Amazon have been involved in crashes that killed more than 75 people since 2015.

Steve DasGupta, the safety director of Amazon’s freight unit, commented: “Our goal is zero accidents, zero fatalities. We run a very safe network of tens of thousands of carriers.” Amazon stated that it eventually suspended all of the contractors involved in the Minnesota, Kansas, and Wyoming crashes.

DasGupta also stated that the company recently made changes to its screening process for contractors and that as of July, 96.5 percent met Amazon’s internal threshold for safety scores.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan