Walmart, the nation’s biggest employer began delivering items by drones to customers in Arkansas as a pilot, in November 2021. On Tuesday, the Bentonville, Arkansas based retailer announced that it has added five more cities where its customers can get items delivered from their stores by drones. These drones will cut delivery time to two hours with Express delivery.
Walmart said that its DroneUp delivery network is expected to include 34 sites by the end of 2022. The company said that they could reach up to 4 million households by the end of the year. It is hoping to cross over a million drone deliveries in a year.
Currently drone delivery of items from Walmart is available in the following cities:
Phoenix, Arizona
Orlando and Tampa, Florida
Dallas, Texas
Richmond, Virginia
Salt Lake City, Utah.
Walmart says that the delivery will be available from 8 a.m to 8 p.m. At least three Walmart stores in the above mentioned cities will offer drone delivery. Customers will be able to order a wide variety of items from medicines to food. The weight limits of the items should be within 10 pounds. The delivery charge will be $3.99.
Drone delivery is the latest way to deliver goods. Walmart has been an early investor in the technology and is leading the market. However, its competitors have also started investing in drones, following the big box retailer’s entry into delivery using this innovative approach.
DroneUp and Walmart, the two companies who have partnered up to deliver this service to customers said that they would offset the cost by getting revenue through other means. These include drone-related services such as insurance inspections and construction oversight. They could also be used for emergency response. These other services will help in decreasing delivery costs and could help the entire drone industry as the flying machines gather flight data as they set out to deliver items to Walmart customers.
Walmart has invested in DroneUp. It has a minority interest and a seat in the five member board of DroneUp.
