Also available in:
One hundred and twenty people who spent their working days driving Amazon-branded vans out of Airway Heights are out of a job by September 30, after the contractor that employed them, 2EZY LLC, told Washington state regulators it had no warning the work was ending.
2EZY operated two Amazon delivery stations — known internally as DSK4 and HGE2 — out of 12315 W. McFarlane Road, on the West Plains logistics corridor a few miles from Fairchild Air Force Base. In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN Act) filing with the Washington Employment Security Department dated September 15, the company said it is closing entirely and separating all 120 employees: 109 delivery drivers, five dispatch workers, four helpers, one administrative assistant and one manager.
“We only learned of this action from our only client, Amazon, in the last business day,” 2EZY told the state in its filing. “This was unforeseeable — it was simply not possible for us to provide more advance notice of this action.”
Two accounts of how much notice there was
Amazon disputes that timeline. Company spokesperson Leigh Anne Gullett told reporters Amazon notified 2EZY on September 1 that it would not renew the company’s Delivery Service Partner agreement, giving the contractor 30 days before the relationship ended — not one day, as 2EZY’s state filing suggests. “We’re working to connect impacted 2EZY LLC employees with other DSPs in the area,” Gullett said, referring to the dozens of other independently owned delivery contractors that operate under the Amazon DSP program across the region.
The two accounts do not describe the same clock. Amazon’s 30 days refers to notice that the contract itself would not be renewed. 2EZY’s one business day refers to when it learned it would have no work left to give its drivers — the gap between “your contract ends on a date” and “you have no revenue starting now” is exactly the gap a company the size of 2EZY, with a single client, had no cushion to absorb. Neither KHQ nor MyNorthwest, which separately confirmed the job breakdown and the closure date, reported any response from 2EZY to Amazon’s version of events.
Why the distinction matters here
Amazon does not employ the people who drive its delivery vans in Airway Heights, or almost anywhere else. Under the Delivery Service Partner program the company built out starting in 2018, independent companies like 2EZY lease Amazon-branded vehicles, hire and manage drivers, and operate routes under Amazon’s logo — while Amazon controls the volume of work and can end the relationship on its own schedule. The driver payroll, the WARN Act obligations, and now the layoff itself belong to the contractor, not the retailer whose packages those vans carried.
That structure is why the Washington WARN Act’s 60-day notice requirement collapsed to essentially nothing for the 120 people losing work at DSK4 and HGE2. The law exists to give workers time to line up new employment before a mass layoff hits. It assumes an employer that controls its own future closely enough to see a shutdown coming. A single-client contractor whose one customer can walk away with 30 days’ notice to the company — and, on 2EZY’s account, far less real warning to the people who’d need to find new jobs — is not positioned to give anyone 60 days of anything.
What it means for the West Plains labor market
Airway Heights already carries a mixed economic identity: Fairchild AFB and its roughly 5,000 military and civilian personnel anchor one end of the local economy, while the logistics and warehousing corridor along US 2 and the airport-adjacent industrial parks — built up over the past decade to serve Amazon, Costco Wholesale and other distribution operations — anchors the other. A delivery contractor closing outright and cutting 120 jobs in a single week is a measurable event in that second economy, concentrated on driving and warehouse-adjacent work that does not require a four-year degree and has been one of the more accessible entry points into steady pay in that corridor.
Neither KHQ nor MyNorthwest reported what severance, if any, 2EZY is providing the 120 employees, or whether Washington’s Employment Security Department has stood up rapid-response services — the state’s standard offering after a WARN filing — for the affected workers. Amazon’s Gullett pointed toward other DSPs in the area as a landing spot, but did not say how many open driving positions exist locally or whether they would absorb a workforce this size at once.
The separate cut, for context
Earlier this month, Amazon separately laid off 121 corporate and fulfillment employees across Seattle, Bellevue and Sumner, according to GeekWire’s review of a Washington WARN filing — a distinct action affecting Amazon’s own direct employees, including roles at its SEA106 building in Bellevue that housed software developers, scientists and at least one vice president. That cut and the 2EZY closure in Airway Heights are not the same story: one is Amazon trimming its own corporate ranks amid its broader AI-driven restructuring; the other is a single-client contractor going out of business when Amazon, as its only customer, moved on. Both happened in Washington state within roughly the same month. Only one happened in Spokane County.
