Your Amazon packages will soon come faster — if that's even possible

The e-commerce giant said it plans on doubling the number of same-day fulfillment centers located near busy cities in the coming years.

• Amazon announced its plans to double its same-day delivery sites in the coming years. 
• So far this year, the company has delivered 1.8 billion packages in the same or next day.
• The plans come months after Amazon said it ramped up the pace of some deliveries to "within hours."

Fans of instant gratification will soon be even more gratified.

Amazon is planning to double its number of same-day delivery facilities "in the coming years," the company said in a press release. 

As of July, the company said it delivered more than 1.8 billion packages in the same or next day to US Amazon prime members this year — almost four times the amount of same or next-day deliveries it made over the same time period in 2019.

Since the beginning of this year, Amazon said it decreased the distance between its delivery sites and customers by 15%, which means that delivery drivers, as well as the company's vendors and selling partners, can reach customers more efficiently — and thereby lowering Amazon's costs.

The news of the company's expansion of its same-day delivery network comes just months after Amazon ramped up its number of same-day deliveries for US prime customers around cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report. In that report, Amazon said that customers in those cities "can now receive hundreds of thousands of items within hours."

But more same-day delivery sites could also increase in the number of packages and stops for drivers, which in turn, could lead to harsher working conditions.

One Amazon driver anonymously told Insider he was "completely overwhelmed" and "drained" when he was delivering a high volume of packages during Amazon Prime Day, the company's two-day summer sale that occurred from July 11 to 12. Rising temperatures could also make the work of delivery drivers harder. 

Anticipating this concern, Amazon said in its Monday press release said that the expansion of its delivery network won't compromise the safety of its employees, claiming the nature of the worker's jobs will remain the same.

"It's easy to assume the faster we deliver, the faster employees work—but that couldn't be further from the truth," Doug Herrington, the CEO of worldwide Amazon stores, wrote. 

Amazon didn't respond to Insider's immediate request for comment before publication.