‘Where Grit Meets Soul.’ Take a look inside new south Bibb Amazon fulfillment center

Orange vested workers toot the horns on dozens of hydrogen-powered forklifts that whir up and down hundreds of aisles, guided by wires beneath the concrete floor inside the mammoth warehouse in south Bibb County.

The 1 million square foot Amazon Fulfillment Center on Skipper Road opened in July and has nearly doubled the number of employees it promised Middle Georgia.

The company was looking to hire more than 500 people at a job fair earlier this year, but the facility’s General Manager, Corey Landry, said it had about 900 full-time employees working there as of Thursday. About 780 of them are new hires from Middle Georgia, he said.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Landry told The Telegraph during an exclusive tour of the facility. “This is the most exciting associate group that I’ve seen coming into a building … Part of it’s they’re excited to have the good job with benefits up front on day one and the solid $15 minimum wage seems to really excite them.”

Employees there work 10-hour shifts four days a week with two 30-minute breaks daily. The facility operates 22 hours a day, Landry said, and up to 300 employees work each shift.

The company names its facilities after airports and the Macon facility is called SAV3, in reference to the Savannah Hilton Head International Airport.

Most items shelved, boxed and shipped from SAV3 are big, bulky items greater than 18 inches wide. Cat litter, baby strollers, basketballs, printers, TVs and computers are some examples of products shipped and received there.

Rachael Lighty, regional manager of external communications for the company, said more than 50% of the facility’s inventory comes from small and medium-sized businesses.

The facility is not yet fully-stocked and only about 30% of its shelves are full.

For items that do not fit in one of the company’s 25 standard box sizes, there’s a “Box on Demand” machine. An employee enters the dimensions of the item into a computer and the machine produces a box fitted perfectly for that item.

“It’s one of the hardest things that we train people on,” Landry said.

Elsewhere in the warehouse, employees packed items with bubble wrap, labeled boxes with shipping stickers and scanned them before sliding the boxes onto a speedy conveyor belt.

When the sticker is scanned, an email is sent immediately to the customer, letting them know their package is out for delivery.

A motto and a mascot based on the facility’s location were established to help shape the work culture.

“We saw all the billboards saying, ‘Macon, where soul lives,’” Landry said. “We decided to make our motto, ‘Where Grit Meets Soul.’ All of our t-shirts say that on the back of them now and we give those to our associates.”

The thrasher, Georgia’s state bird, is the mascot.

Right now, there are no plans to open the facility for public tours, Lighty said.

This story was originally published September 6, 2019 at 6:00 AM.