DroneUp can deliver packages within a mile-and-a-half radius of a Walmart. | Image: Walmart
Walmart announced on Tuesday that itโs planning on expanding the number of stores that offer drone-delivered packages; by the end of the year, it hopes to fly deliveries from 34 sites across Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. The company says the expansion will give up to 4 million households access to the service, which is a significant increase. When the company launched the program in November 2021, it was only available in a single town in Arkansas.
Walmart says that customers who live near drone-capable stores will be able to order items weighing less than 10 pounds in total between 8AM and 8PM. The deliveries, which cost $3.99, are done via a drone operated by a company called DroneUp, which has a partnership with Walmart. (The retailer has also invested in the delivery company.) Workers at the Walmart location receive the order, pack it into a box, and then secure the box to a drone. Then, a pilot flies the drone to the customer, and itโs dropped onto their front lawn using what looks like a giant claw.
GIF: Walmart
Itโs like a claw-machine game but in reverse.
It sounds like Walmartโs not just trying to expand the programโs footprint โ the company also wants to increase the number of packages itโs delivering via drone. In its press release, the company says itโs completed โhundreds of deliveries within a matter of months.โ With the expansion, it says itโll have the ability to do more than a million drone deliveries a year.
In its press release, the company said it thought people would use the service for โemergency itemsโ and has been surprised that something like Hamburger Helper has become the top-selling item at one location. Iโll be perfectly honest, Iโm skeptical of this claim โ how could anyone introduce a service where a package is flown to you in โas little as 30 minutesโ and not expect that people would use it to replace those quick trips to the store to pick up one or two items?
With this planned expansion, Walmart could take the lead when it comes to commercial drone delivery in the US. The Wall Street Journal reports that while companies like FedEx and UPS are looking into drones, theyโre currently more in the experimentation stage rather than the โoffering it as a service phase.โ Alphabet, Googleโs parent company, is operating a drone delivery service called Wing in Texas and Virginia, and itโs delivered hundreds of thousands of packages worldwide, but it currently hasnโt announced further expansion plans.
Then, of course, thereโs Amazon, which has been working on its drone delivery service for many years. Several recent reports, however, make it seem as if the company is struggling to get its program off the ground; despite a 2016 demonstration delivery in the UK, Amazon currently isnโt delivering packages by drones, and itโs unclear if and when thatโll start.
Amazon is, however, trying to play a very different game. It wants its drone deliveries to be autonomous, meaning that there wonโt be any human pilots. Walmart and DroneUpโs system, however, has โcertified pilotsโ at the helm. While this might make it more difficult for Walmart to scale drone deliveries at a rapid pace, some of its customers are probably getting used to getting their packages dropped down from the sky; thatโs not something that can be said for Amazon.
As Ars Technica points out, though, Walmartโs system does have some limitations. Currently, itโs legally required to have line-of-sight to the drones while theyโre flying, meaning that it has to have control towers in its storesโ parking lots to offer drone service. This limitation also means that deliveries have to happen within a 1.5-mile radius of the store. And, of course, DroneUp has to hire more operators as more people use the service. Earlier this year, it announced plans to do so, and now itโs clear why; now, DroneUp and Walmart just have to deliver on their promises of expansion.