KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – WVLT News took an inside look at Amazon’s Knoxville delivery station on Monday and offered more details on how the largest online store in Scruffy City operates.

Amazon’s newest East Tennessee joins a similar center in Alcoa, taking over the footprint of what was once the East Towne Mall.

On Monday, delivery center representatives spoke with WVLT News about how the facility is affecting Amazon customers in East Tennessee.

According to Field Leader TJ Martinez, the biggest impact for people in East Tennessee will be shorter delivery times.

“I think for a lot of employees, even from a personal perspective, it took about two, three or four days for a package to arrive in Knoxville. The first day we launched, it was a one- or two-day delivery.”

But the center doesn’t just serve people in Knoxville. The online shopping giant is also using the center to appeal to more rural customers. Another Amazon representative, Senior Manager of Economic Development Jessica Breaux, said expanding Amazon’s delivery network is important as the business sees continued growth and more customers.

“The closer we can get to the customer, the better their experience ordering from Amazon will be,” he said. “As we built our delivery network across the state of Tennessee, we wanted to make absolutely sure that we were giving our customers in East Tennessee the same capability and the same opportunity.”

The facility also means Amazon acts as a major employer in the Knoxville area. Amazon currently has about 250 employees working at the former East Towne Mall location and plans to increase that number to more than 300 in the future.

These employees have a lot of packages to handle. Amazon ships an average of 45,000 to 50,000 packages per day, and that number can nearly double during the holiday season. To keep up with demand, the facility is using new technology, Martinez said.

“With our new automation ATDA system, we can achieve 99.9% quality when we focus on the slam tag,” he said. “Once this is scanned it will be 99.9% accurate.”

But that’s not all. Another Knoxville business, Shane Stanifer’s TC4 Logistics, is also seeing some activity. TC4 Logistics is one of a dozen contractors Amazon has hired; The business handles most off-site deliveries.

“In a matter of months, we went from unemployed to employed to having 70 drivers on the road every week,” Stanifer said.

Amazon is still hiring as the holiday season approaches 1,000 seasonal workers at Knoxville and Alcoa locations.

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