I am a pretty prolific user of Amazon, probably like many on this board. My brother and I had a recent competition and I think he won, but we were both close, in having well over the mid-100 deliveries last year.

I think it was 6-8 months ago Amazon opened a warehouse in the next town over, maybe 15 miles up the road, so this morning I thought to do some “tracking” of past and future shipments, and except for one (remanufactured Garmin GPS for the boat) every single item has originated at that warehouse.

There is a breathtaking assortment of stuff I’ve bought, everything from a replacement Nest thermostat to an ear/nose hair trimmer to cat grass to a special boat mirror to door latches to a Tesla-to-1772 converter connector to USB-C right angle plugs to solar charge controller to hot water heater coil to well, lots …and more.

Where I used to get stuff from two or three centers (Kentucky, Illinois, etc.) everything now comes from just up the road. I’ve seen the videos of inside an Amazon warehouse, but the ability to have so much stuff on hand, dispatchable in an instant is truly mind-boggling, at least to me.

Which brings me to another story: about two weeks back I was driving one of the back-roads to an artist supply store to avoid the main road, except that road crosses a railroad track and I was stopped by a train. A long train. So my shortcut didn’t exactly save me any time, eh? And here’s my memory of what the boxcars said on the side as they went past:

Amazon. Amazon. Amazon. Walmart. Amazon. Amazon. {some unknown freight company}.
Amazon. Amazon. {unknown}. Amazon. Amazon. Walmart. Amazon.

Then there was an interlude of maybe 8-10 tanker cars, followed by a series of intermodals, or 18-wheeler trailers on flat cars. Ready?

Amazon. Amazon. {unknown}. Amazon. Amazon. WalMart. Amazon [unknown} {unknown}
Amazon. Amazon. And it continued…

I have to say I was mesmerized, and I wish I had thought to whip out the camera and take a picture of it. The scale of this industrial behemoth, having come into existence just 30 years ago is/was just amazing. (No great point here, just wanted to tell somebody the story.)