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Amazon will pay employees $10K and 3 months salary to start delivery businesses

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Amazon wants its employees to quit their jobs and create their own delivery businesses. But it turns out that’s an expensive proposition. So Amazon is upping the ante.

In June 2018, Amazon announced U.S. employees could apply to start their own small businesses, delivering Prime packages in Amazon-branded vans and uniforms.

The company hoped it could fill its huge need for people to bring packages from local Amazon sorting centers to the customers who ordered them.

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Amazon said tens of thousands of employees expressed interest in the program. However, the company acknowledged Monday that many of its workers couldn’t afford the funds they needed to get the businesses off the ground.

Amazon has announced it will give employees up to $10,000 of the start-up money they need, along with three months of their existing Amazon pay. This will allot them the necessary capital they need to get into the service.

“We received overwhelming interest from tens of thousands of individuals who applied to be part of the Delivery Service Partner program, including many employees,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, in a press release. “We’ve heard from associates that they want to participate in the program but struggled with the transition.”

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Amazon has been trying to gear up an independent delivery service to handle packages now going to companies such as UPS and FedEx, as well as the Postal Service.

Amazon said there have been more than 200 independent contractors who signed up to handle the deliveries since the service started. Between them, they have hired thousands of local drivers to deliver packages, according to Amazon. This year, the company plans to add hundreds of delivery contractors. That includes the former employees who take up the company on its offer.

Interested parties can visit this website for information.

Written by Chris Isidore for CNN.

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