Richmond resident Quinton Burgess started his career as a full-time UPS driver before enlisting in the U.S. Army. He began as a mechanic and driver in the military before becoming a platoon leader, completing his college degree and managing logistics as a transportation officer in Afghanistan for a few years.
After retiring in 2015, Burgess worked on a variety of projects before returning to driving and launching his own long-haul business. The trucking company grew steadily, but an opportunity arose that put things into overdrive.
In October last year, he decided to start his own delivery business, Allegiance Logistics, with the help of Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner program. The program supports entrepreneurs that build companies to deliver Amazon packages to homes and businesses, and offers $10,000 toward startup costs to veterans.
Allegiance started with 10 employees and five vans, which were provided by Amazon.
“When you’re introduced to the program, you want to grow to about 20 routes comfortably, so there’s not too much expectation to overwhelm you,” Burgess said. “Once you get to that 20, it depends on you and your business and how much you want to grow.”
And grown he has. In less than a year, Allegiance has expanded to more than 100 employees and 50-plus routes throughout the Richmond area.
The Amazon DSP program supplied Burgess with business coaches and a team that helped guide the company’s launch, remaining as a support network throughout the first few months of operation.
“I had lots of questions at first, and there was a big learning curve. But because they start you out at five vans, you learn what the job is day-to-day without being overwhelmed too much,” Burgess said. “In Richmond, they’re phenomenal.”
All of Allegiance’s drivers live around the Richmond area, and Burgess taps the Army transition center at Fort Lee and other resources to hire local veterans – about 15 percent of employees.
Burgess said the Amazon DSP partnership and Allegiance’s launch was the best of both worlds.
“For one, it allowed me to be on the ground more. I was in the day-to-day operations and more integrated from a maintenance aspect, with drivers coming in and making deliveries throughout the community,” Burgess said. “Doing this job reinvigorated me, being away from the military.
“All veterans that come onboard enjoy it, because one, it pays for a good job and two, it puts you back in team-building mode. In teams, like platoons in the Army, we’re working for Amazon in an environment that we create here; so we can be around people every day and be collectively joined together, and accomplish this together.”
Burgess is one of more than 200 entrepreneurs that started a delivery company under the Amazon DSP program, as of May this year.
The program has had some pushback, given the difficulty of hiring and vetting dozens of drivers as employees instead of contractors. With Allegiance’s growth as an example, however, along with its recent falling out with UPS and its goal of one-day delivery, it’s plain to see why Amazon is still pushing the initiative.
