Youngkin Celebrates Newest Amazon Facility in Stafford County
Governor, elected officials cut ribbon for second inbound cross dock in the state.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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The six robots that work in the center of the newest Amazon inbound cross dock in Stafford County don’t have official names yet.
Staff are working on that, operations manager Megan Brockmeyer said, but in the meantime, her personal name for them is “the Hungry Hippos.”
Like the hippos in the children’s game, the robots reach forward with flexible necks. They quickly grab a yellow tote packed with Amazon orders, scan the barcode to determine its destination, and swing around to drop it on a pallet of other totes headed to the same place.
Smaller robots on little race car tracks are also responsible for filling the yellow totes with items sorted from shipments that come in daily to the cross dock, and there are at least five miles of automated conveyor track that circulates within the 630,000-square-foot building off Centreport Parkway.
(Above: one of the “Hungry Hippos” in action.)
But there are also 750 human employees who receive “great pay and great benefits from Day 1,” site director Mike Waterman said.
Seventy-five of them have already been promoted from front-line staff since the facility began operating in March, he said.
Waterman led tours of the newest Amazon facility—known as RMN3 for the letter code of the nearest airport, which is Stafford Regional—on Tuesday morning, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the building.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, State Senators Tara Durant and Bryce Reeves, Delegate Paul Milde, and Stafford Supervisors Deuntay Diggs and Monica Gary also attended the event.
“It’s like magic,” Youngkin said of how quickly items he orders from Amazon arrive at his doorstep. “And when you visit one of these facilities, you see that it really is magic.”
RMN3 receives inventory from small- and medium retailers and consolidates that inventory into bulk shipments to go on to fulfillment and distribution centers.
It’s the second cross dock in Virginia, which is also home to six fulfillment centers and Amazon’s second headquarters.
Since first coming to the state in 2006, Amazon has invested $135 billion in Virginia and has created 39,000 direct full- and part-time jobs and 200,00 indirect jobs, said Holly Sullivan, the company’s director of worldwide economic development.
RMN3 represents a $150 million investment in Stafford County, Youngkin said.
Machines are in constant motion in the building, but Waterman said that automation has helped the company grow its employee base, creating new, highly skilled jobs rather than eliminating jobs.
“There’s also less strain on our associates,” Waterman said.
Waterman said he’s been with Amazon for seven years. He came to the company after a 25-year career in the Marine Corps, looking for another career that offered “hands-on, active leadership” opportunities.
He’s one of many military veterans who work for Amazon. Brockmeyer is another. As well as being a veteran herself, she is a military spouse, and said Amazon offers an internal transfer program that allows spouses to keep working for the company despite having to move from post to post.
Youngkin said Virginia’s military veteran population is a large part of what makes its workforce special.
He said that in today’s business climate, companies can choose to locate anywhere in the world.
“To see Amazon choose Virginia again is very special,” he said.
Waterman said the employees of RMN3 are already putting down roots and creating partnerships in the Stafford area—through volunteering with the regional food bank and for the county parks and recreation department—and are excited to continue developing those relationships.
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