Same-day delivery service Deliv has bagged a former Amazon.com Inc. executive to run its delivery operations.  Jeff Helms, who worked for Amazon in various capacities since 2011, managed last-mile delivery operations in Southern California for the e-retailer and led the launch of Amazon’s first Logistics Delivery Stations in North America.

“Hiring Jeff is a major coup and is further acknowledgement of the market leadership position we have established in a fast-growing space,” says Daphne Carmeli, Deliv founder and CEO. “We are seeing a massive push from some of the country’s leading retailers for us to scale our national delivery network quickly. We couldn’t find a better fit for us in terms of his extensive logistics operations experience as well as his ability to adapt to our start-up team culture.”

Helms graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and held roles in routing optimization, operational logistics and metrics and mitigating delivery barriers in the military before serving as a professor of military science at Arkansas State University.

Deliv enlists professional drivers, students and other consumers with spare time and a vehicle to fulfill local online orders from area stores. It uses GPS to track deliveries—allowing customers to see where their items are in transit.

“I was blown away by their totally disruptive way of solving the challenges of last-mile logistics in today’s very competitive world, challenges that all of the nation’s retailers need to solve,” Helms says. “From my experience building and managing asset-based logistics services, their ability to leverage the crowd offers a scalable and economical solution that will undoubtedly change the game in the delivery environment.”

Deliv delivers orders on behalf of several Top 500 retailers, including 1-800-Flowers.com, Nordstrom Inc., Staples Inc. and Chico’s. The service operates in the San Francisco Bay Area and in metropolitan the Los Angeles and Chicago. The company says it is in the process of expanding to six additional markets.