Customer storyAmazon Delivery Service PartnerEast Manhattan, New York City
How a Manhattan Amazon DSP staffs 120 routes a day without drowning in hiring paperwork
Hudson Steel Corp. replaced spreadsheets, forms, and email threads with one hiring system. A team of three now takes a rider from applying to their first route in days, with the paperwork done.
- E-cargo bikes in the fleet
- 49
- Delivery routes per day
- 100 to 120
- From posting to an activated driver
- 3 to 4days
The business
Hudson Steel delivers Amazon packages in East Manhattan: 100 to 120 routes a day on 49 e-cargo bikes, on the busiest streets in the country. Amazon sets the routes and the rules. Hudson Steel owns the bikes and hires the riders.
Routes are promised to Amazon ahead of time. Miss them and you pay. Hire too many and you cut hours for the riders you worked hard to find. So hiring has to speed up and slow down on command. For owner Junior Taveras, his HR lead, and a dispatcher, that was a 40-plus-hour-a-week job.
Before: spreadsheets, forms, and phone photos
Candidates lived in a spreadsheet. Google Forms filled the gaps. Documents sat in email threads and phone photos. There was no way to book interviews or follow up without jumping between tools, and no single view of who was where. When a good candidate takes another job if you are slow for two days, that delay cost hires.
“Logistics is a fast-paced industry. Demand for people changes constantly, and with spreadsheets and forms we could not respond fast enough.”
What changed
Hudson Steel tried Talevo first, then came back a few months later as a paying customer. Hiring now runs in one place, from QR scan to first route. Junior named the four features that matter most.
Document requests
Talevo asks each candidate for the I-9 and payroll papers the opening needs, shows what is missing, and can hold the hire until it is all in. No chasing paperwork at orientation.
Candidate follow-up
Every candidate has a thread. Texts and follow-ups happen inside Talevo and stay saved.
Video interviews
Applicants record a short video when they apply. The team sees how they speak and carry themselves before booking a live interview.
QR codes at the station
Walk-ins scan a printed code and apply on the spot. Nothing gets retyped into a spreadsheet.
Results
| Metric | Before Talevo | With Talevo |
|---|---|---|
| Posting to activated rider | 7 to 10 days | 3 to 4 dayswhen the candidate is engaged |
| Interview no-shows | About 1 in 3 | About 1 in 10every follow-up happens in one place |
| Hours per week on hiring | 40+ across a 3-person team | About 15 |
| Tools in the hiring stack | Spreadsheet + Google Forms + email + a separate e-signature tool | One system |
Three more things Junior pointed out:
- Speed keeps riders. Riders who start fast stay. Riders who wait go somewhere else.
- Hiring that flexes. When Amazon volume drops, the pipeline pauses cleanly. When it spikes, the team moves fast.
- Fewer tools. No separate e-signature product, no document spreadsheet, no forms tool.
“Is $449 a month worth it?”
“Yes. It takes the administrative load off my team, everything about a candidate is in one place, and we can move at the speed this industry demands. I am not paying for three other tools to handle signatures and documents.”
Why this matters for other DSPs
Almost every DSP hires the way Hudson Steel did: a spreadsheet for tracking, a forms tool for the gaps, and a phone full of document photos. Talevo was built with a DSP as its first customer. The QR walk-ins, document requests, texting, and Amazon export all exist because a real owner needed them.
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