RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Anyone who’s driven down Interstate 24 through Rutherford County, has probably noticed multiple massive warehouses.
They’re home to the county’s nearly 27,000 manufacturing and distribution jobs.
“We’ve put a lot of resources back into the community with infrastructure and workforce and education,” Patrick Cammack, Senior Vice President of Economic Development at the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, said. “That’s something here at the Chamber we’ve put a lot of effort behind, and we have a lot of great partnerships between our academic partners and our industry partners.
Cammack said as the area continues to grow, building a sustainable workforce is key.
“Really, our goal is that our residents can find a job — a great job — here,” Cammack said. “We want that to happen today, but we also want the children that are in our school system to be able to stay here, be educated here and find a job here that’s a great career.”
A prime example of that is Austin Holloway, who works at Amazon’s BNA 3 fulfillment center. Holloway started with the company 11 years ago and, as of publication, serves as a senior operations manager.
“I actually graduated high school just down the road, I’m local from this area and I applied for amazon because I heard great things about Amazon as a whole,” Holloway said. “I was actually an entry-level associate and I took advantage of opportunities throughout my journey here and am where I am today.”
Holloway is one of roughly 1,500 people the fulfillment center employs to sort, pack, and send out packages around the clock. General manager Victoria Hogan told News 2 she thought people would be surprised to know the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes at their fulfillment center.
“The shear capacity of how many items we’re able to ship out,” Hogan said. “We can ship out 300,000 packages a day, and very quickly, too. In just a couple hours, we can get items out our door.”
Amazon’s senior manager of Economic Development, Jessica Breaux, said partnering with Rutherford County was an obvious choice when considering things like workforce availability and access to the airport and interstate.
“This part of the country is really within about an eight hour drive of 80% of the US population. So that really helps from a logistics and distribution standpoint,” Breaux said. “But it also helps our employees just to be able to get to and from their home, their work, children’s’ schools easily.”
With some other Middle Tennessee area employers closing plants and distribution centers, Amazon invited those impacted to apply. Benefits include health care on day one and free college tuition with partnering institutions.
