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By Kevin Killough, National Energy Journalist
Kevin@CowboyStateDaily.com
Last week, Walmart expanded its drone delivery service to “select markets” in Texas, Arizona and Florida.
When asked if stores in Wyoming would ever receive the service, the nation’s largest retailer did not respond.
According to a statement, the company planned to offer the service at 34 locations in six states by the end of the year, which would have included Utah and Virginia, as well as Arkansas, where the service was launched. offered for the first time.
The company has yet to announce drone deliveries for Utah or Virginia, but it continues to rapidly expand the program.
Announcements for the service indicate that Walmart wants to expand its drone infrastructure to deliver 1 million packages a year.
So, there may be hope for Wyoming drone deliveries in the future.
Burger Helper
In 2020, Walmart partnered with commercial drone company DroneUp for trial deliveries of COVID-19 test kits to homes. After trials delivered hundreds of kits to Walmart stores in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Cheektowaga, New York, the company embarked on general deliveries in May to locations in Arkansas, including the Supercenter. from Walmart to Bentonville.
“While Walmart initially thought customers would use the service for emergency items, we’re seeing customers using it for its convenience, such as a quick fix for a weekday meal,” DroneUp said in a press release on its delivery partnership. “The top-selling item in one of our current hubs is Hamburger Helper.”
How the service works is as follows: Customers located within one kilometer of a participating store select their items from the DroneUp Delivery website between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. local time. For $3.99, drones can deliver over 10,000 eligible items weighing up to 10 pounds. This includes fragile items like eggs. It takes about 30 minutes to arrive at the customer’s home.
FAA regulations
To use drones in any commercial activity, the pilot must have an FAA license.
Pilots must follow certain guidelines, including operating the drone within the pilot’s line of sight. Pilots can receive waivers to deviate from FAA regulations for operating drones, but these are not always easy to obtain.
According to ReedSmith, a global law firm, DroneUp circumvented waiver requirements by building towers in participating store parking lots that allow pilots to see up to 1.5 miles away.
DroneUp founder Tom Walker told ReedSmith that the company hopes to obtain a line-of-sight waiver, which will allow deliveries up to 3 miles from the store.
Patrick Santucci, director of marketing and communications for DroneUp, told the Cowboy State Daily that the company’s pilots still use line-of-sight operations.
Other Drone Services
Walmart and DroneUp seem to be succeeding where Amazon stumbled.
In 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced that the company would launch a drone delivery service within the next five years. It received widespread media buzz.
A Bloomberg investigation earlier this year found that the Prime Air program was facing technical challenges, high turnover and security issues. In one incident, a drone crashed when several safety devices failed and the pilot lost control of the plane.
The accident also started a bush fire.
In June, Amazon announced it would begin Prime Air deliveries to Lockeford, California.
Wing is another drone delivery service, but rather than rotating drones, the company delivers with unmanned fixed-wing aircraft that launch vertically like the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey aircraft.
Unlike the Osprey, the wings do not tilt to advance the propellers. Wing drones have propellers on the top and wings.
The company has partnered with DoorDash and KFC in Australia. He is working with Walgreens to launch a delivery service in the United States.
UPS Flight Forward Inc., a subsidiary of United Parcel Service, is another developing drone delivery service.
Like Wing, it uses fixed-wing aircraft. The company focuses on the transport of medical samples.
In 2019, it became the first company to receive an FAA certification that authorizes the operations of a remote-controlled unmanned airline.
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