Several possibilities: Driver overlooked your package. Got lost. Ran low on gas/mechanical difficulty. Had a fender bender. Became ill. Was called to return to the distribution center.
Driver most certainly could have said “screw it, I’m done.”
One time I had a package announce its immanent arrival, like yours, and it never came. I could have sworn I saw/heard the Amazon truck but nothing was delivered (and it wasn’t marked as delivered). It showed up the next day.
I remembered a time when I witnessed an Amazon driver drop a package in the middle of my yard and run off. She saw me and said “Sorry, I don’t mess with no dogs.” My dogs were inside, behind a glass door, barking their heads off as they will when someone is in their yard. I actually didn’t hold it against her. If you’re afraid of dogs, you’re afraid of dogs, and aren’t going to trust a glass storm door.
So, I figured this same thing happened with my package that was “on its way” but never came. The next day when I got a notice of delivery I closed the front door so the beasties couldn’t be menacing, and my package arrived. Not sure if it was the same driver now feeling safe, or a different driver who would have delivered it anyway.
But yes, other than what @Peanuthead said, the driver could have just decided not to deliver for whatever reason.
It can be very frustrating in an urban area to start watching that map when the truck is only a few stops away. I assume that the truck’s route is automatically generated based on the addresses of the packages in the truck, which means they can be going down the very next street, and just keep going further and further away, until they (ideally) turn a corner and start working their way back to you. So if I see that it is 10 stops away, I’ll come back in 30 or 40 minutes to see how close they are now. I may have to do that more than once.
I went thru that once. Turned out the label bad gotten quite battered. Some part of it was readable enough that once it floated around the distribution point for a while it got sent out again and actually delivered.
But I suspect that in this case the package was scanned to go onto the truck but didn’t make it out or went on another truck.
I’ve seen two Amazon trucks next to each other with packages being transferred from one to the other. I don’t know why but I’m sure it screws up whatever route was previously projected.
I also wouldn’t be surprised at all if Amazon is iron-fisted about overtime, and the driver was compelled to go back to the barn, lest they go past 40 hours that week or something.
Professional truck drivers are forbidden from driving for more than 8 hours (I think) in one shift due to federal safety rules. I have no idea if that rule applies to delivery drivers, though.
I have seen that, too. One big difference is that Amazon uses conventional vans more with a large horizontal sliding door on the side while UPS trucks only open on the rear and the door lifts vertically. I’d think it’s easier to use the side door since that’s how they make most deliveries.
I’m fairly certain some scans are completely fictional. I had a package during the winter that:
Allegedly it arrived in NH from KY on a Thursday, and was sent out for delivery but wasn’t delivered. Then it was shipped to MA Friday afternoon (??), to a distribution center 50 miles away, but spent less than an hour traveling, between scans, before it returned to NH but ended up in a different town than before it “went” to MA. It then allegedly spent 48 hours hanging out at a UPS distribution center 10 miles from my house before it was finally delivered.
I met the driver outside for my last Amazon delivery. The driver informed me that she no longer had to deliver to me because of the vicious dogs at my address. She made it clear that I was lucky to be getting my package. If I hadn’t come out in time to greet her she would have left and marked the package as undeliverable. She then threw my package out the truck window at me.
It seems they have something in their database noting which addresses have “vicious dogs” and allow drivers the discretion of whether or not to deliver to that address.
Yeah I have a dog, scared of her shadow and every thing else that moves. She was locked in the house, not making a sound. Amazon doesn’t have “regular” drivers around here. I never saw this driver before and as far as I know she was never here before. But yet she somehow knew I have a “vicious” dog.