A City Council bill written to make delivery driving safer could put more than 10,000 New York jobs at risk and push the warehouses that stock the city’s doorsteps out beyond the five boroughs, according to a new report from opponents of the measure.
The 146-page analysis was done by AKRF, a transportation and consulting firm, and released Tuesday through the New York Delivers Coalition, an industry group fighting the bill, as first reported by AMNY. It examines Intro 0518-2026, the Delivery Protection Act, which Queens Council Member Tiffany Cabán introduced in February.
Cabán’s bill targets last-mile facilities, the warehouses and storage sites where packages land before the final leg to your apartment. Under the bill, every one of them in the city would need a two-year license from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, at $500 a year.
The bill would also force those facilities to directly employ the people who sort packages and drive routes instead of routing the work through staffing agencies and subcontractors, a practice the bill would largely ban for core delivery and warehouse work. Any operator that kept non-employee drivers on would have to post a $500,000 bond per driver, give workers 30 days’ notice before firing them, and pay for six hours of annual safety training.
AKRF’s report argues those rules would be expensive enough to drive last-mile facilities out of the city entirely. It projects as many as 132 million additional late deliveries a year, an extra $664 in annual delivery costs for the average household, and 10 to 16 million more vehicle miles traveled in the city each year as trucks drive back in from relocated facilities. More miles, the report says, means worse congestion and more emissions.
“Many of us have spent years building our companies, creating jobs, and investing in our communities,” Rudy Cazares, founder of the delivery service provider Team Cazar Logistics, said in the coalition’s press release. He said the study “puts numbers behind what small business owners have been saying all along,” and warned that “businesses like mine could be forced to close, putting thousands of New Yorkers out of work.”
Tom Grech, president and chief executive officer of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said in the same release that the bill would “fundamentally reshape how last-mile delivery operated in New York City.” Forcing facilities out, he said, “would put jobs at risk for drivers, warehouse workers, and the small businesses that depend on our operations, while increasing costs, slowing deliveries.”
Amazon, which partners with dozens of the small delivery firms the bill would touch, made a similar case in written testimony to the council on April 8. The company said its commitment to “safe, fast, and affordable delivery” is central to its work in the city, but that the bill “as written” would threaten the more than 40 local small businesses it partners with for deliveries and “the jobs of the more than 5,000 people they employ.”
The bill frames its requirements as safety measures. The mandated training covers defensive driving, ergonomic package handling, and how to spot heat stress and repetitive-stress injuries. The bill also adds anti-retaliation protections for workers and structures that $500,000 bond so anyone hurt in a road crash involving a delivery worker can collect on a judgment against the driver or their employer.
The relocation fears land in a city already recalibrating around the cost of driving. The MTA launched congestion pricing in January 2025, charging most passenger and commercial vehicles a toll to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, a program that drew loud opposition from the trucking and delivery industries over its impact on their costs.
Cabán introduced the bill in February with more than 30 co-sponsors, including Brooklyn council members Restler, Nurse, Hanif and Gutiérrez, whose district covers Bushwick, along with Public Advocate Williams. The Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection last heard the bill on April 9, and it is currently laid over in committee.
Featured image: Courtesy prepassalliance.org
