For about two years, Walmart has been testing a drone delivery program in various parts of the United States. Now, the American company says it is ready to expand this feature to other places. Specifically, by the end of the year, Walmart plans to add 34 locations to its existing DroneUp network. With this new expansion, about 4 million households in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia will have access to drone deliveries. For a shipping fee of about $4, residents of these areas will be able to order various groceries and household items, weighing about 4.5 kilograms (total). According to Walmart, packages will be delivered within 30 minutes.
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Deliveries are made via drones operated by DroneUp, a company that has a partnership with Walmart. Walmart store employees receive the order, pack it in a box, and then secure the box to the drone. A pilot then flies the drone to the customer 's location .
Between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., customers will be able to order whatever they want from tens of thousands of eligible items.
The company estimates it will have the capacity to deliver 1 million packages annually via drones.
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“After completing hundreds of deliveries in just a few months at existing DroneUp hubs, we’ve seen firsthand how drones can offer customers a practical solution for getting certain items quickly. Most importantly, we’ve seen a positive response from our customers who have used the service. In fact, while we initially thought customers would use the service for emergency items, we’ve found that they’re using it as a quick fix for even a weekly meal,” Walmart says of the deliveries already made with drones.
With this planned expansion, Walmart could take the lead in drone delivery in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reports that while companies like FedEx and UPS are looking into drones, they are currently more in the experimental stage. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, operates a drone delivery service in Texas and Virginia, and has delivered hundreds of thousands of packages around the world, but has not yet announced any further expansion plans.
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Of course, there's also Amazon, which has been working on drone delivery for years. However, it's unclear if and when it will start offering the service to customers.
