If you’re anywhere out and about in Havant between 9:30 and 12:30*, seven days a week, you’ll probably have noticed this logo, usually stuck on the back door of a tattered white van along with a separate sticker advertising ‘driving jobs’. They’re usually tucked into a bigger, even more anonymous fleet of similar vans, mostly white and unbranded but with the occasional coloured variant.
These are just some of the Amazon Delivery Service Partner vans heading into the Amazon delivery station in New Lane, arriving empty in the mornings to pick up loads before racing out through Park Road South in timed waves to begin deliveries into Portsmouth, Fareham and onward towards Southampton. Others will be streaming along Purbrook Way onto the Asda Roundabout before heading south down the A3(M) or north along Hulbert Road towards the A3(M) northbound at Waterlooville.
Those arriving from and departing towards the A27 / A259 in the east usually avoid the Park Road South / Langstone Roundabout choke point by heading down through the New Lane level crossing and out through East Street. For those living in Fairfield Road and Beechworth Road, keep your eyes peeled for the convoys when Beechworth is reopened to through traffic.
The picture above shows half a dozen ‘Amazon’ vans queued at the New Lane railway gates on a quiet Sunday morning recently, front passenger seats and dashboards piled distractingly high with Amazon Prime boxes and envelopes.
At least they weren’t heading out along Eastern Road to flatten the cycle bollards this time; that’s a task best left for the bigger boys, the Amazon ‘line haul’ trucks like the one in the video, below.
If you think that’s bad, then spare a thought for the folk who live on Crossland Drive who have to put up with this traffic day-in, day-out, with the really heavy HGVs moving overnight. Also watch out for the vans pulling into your quiet street to swap loads after they leave the DPO1 delivery station. This regularly observed habit has been reported to the site management team who seem at a loss to understand why van drivers do it.
(Part of the reason is that once each empty van is called into the site, it’s only allowed fifteen minutes to pick up its load and clear the site. The strict timekeeping is to ensure that the site doesn’t get clogged up by its own delivery vans. That’s a problem best left to the local streets, or so it seems.)
If you’re troubled by similar antisocial van and HGV traffic, and you’d like to share the details with us, please take this link to report a complaint and we’ll take it up with the Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel.
If you’d like to join the Amazon DPO1 residents’ Action List, take this link to fill in the form. We’ll do the rest.
If, on the other hand, you just want one of those great local jobs that were over-promised in 2019 by the HBC Cabinet Lead for Regeneration and Economy, you’ll find them advertised on social media:
A word of warning – You might want to look at the small print of the van rental charges and think about whether and how VAT applies to you. You might also want to think about where you’re going to park the thing overnight without annoying your neighbours because Amazon certainly don’t want them parked in their ‘Phase 2’ multi-storey van storage building.
* The bulk of the van movements are currently happening before 1:00pm. The afternoon and evening deliveries are being carried out by Amazon ‘Flex’ drivers using their own private cars which are harder to spot.
(Note that this will all change once they start to use that large van storage building and move to real 24/7 operations.)
Havant Civic Society 