Workers at Fernley hardly look like the stereotypical computer nerds most people would associate with an Internet pioneer. Most of the workers come from the surrounding communities, although Amazon did relocate some of the facility's management to the area. The process of turning online orders into real-world deliveries begins at the 20 or so receiving docks, where Sattler works, as trucks coming in from suppliers and distributors unload their goods. The trucks tend to arrive in the morning, Wilke explained, because many truckers like to drive at night. Once the goods are cataloged, they are moved to a vast open space where workers sort through them to determine where they should be stored.
Toys go in one area.
Books in another. Consumer electronics in yet another part of the warehouse. The pickers work with radio-controlled, handheld scanners that tell them what to grab and where the item is located, based on orders that have come into Amazon's Web site over the past hour or so. Pickers do not work on just one order at a time. Instead, a picker in the toy section might grab 10 different toys for 10 different orders, while a picker in the book section might pick eight different books for eight different orders.