Question re How Amazon Pays Its Package Delivery Drivers

Holy wall of text, Batman!

TL;DR: FCP ponders how much Amazon pays its drivers for deliveries to BFE.

I had read/heard about Amazon deploying its own home delivery service, and this evening they dispatched a middle-aged lady out to our farm with a $30 Prime package delivery.

Our place is five miles past BFE, and right around dusk, my landline rings with the driver saying she can't find me. I spend 5 minutes on the phone figuring out where she's at and getting her headed my way. About ten minutes later, a new Mercedes S-450 with out-of-state plates slow-rolls up our long arse gravel driveway. Lady gets out, digs through about 20 packages in her rear seat, hands me mine, and rolls back down past the garden and out.

Assuming the driver spent 10 minutes driving/searching before she called, she would've spent about 30 minutes delivering that single package to me. How in the hell can Amazon pay enough on a $30 item to justify this lady driving her $90K personal vehicle out into the north LP hinterlands on a rainy, Wednesday evening? Or, more bluntly, how can USPS be so mismanaged that it's more economically feasible for Amazon to deploy independent drivers rather than use the existing postal service infrastructure?

Although this was the first actual package Amazon has delivered to me via private courier (or whatever they are), their service missed a Sunday delivery to me last week. So, on Monday morning I contacted Amazon to get my free month of Prime--like I've done a couple of dozen times before when USPS screwed up Sunday deliveries. Normally, I go into their online chat, complain that the delivery date was not met, and they comp me a free month of Prime. Pretty simple.

This time, they say their driver's truck "got stuck," and they ask if I want a complete refund. I say sure, and within a few minutes my order is completely cancelled, and my package is no longer out for delivery. I actually had to reorder the items and wait another two days--this time for USPS. But, apparently, rather than offering a Prime discount to customers, Amazon just cancels the order and pulls the package from their driver's delivery route--something they can do when the package hasn't been handed over to a third party like USPS/UPS.

Pretty sure my situation is the exception out here in the woods, but, based on my driver's new ride and her persistence, Amazon must be paying these folks some reasonable motivational dineros.

Oh, and for your troubles: