Walmart Ends Drone Deliveries in 3 Cities; Moves Focus to Dallas

Walmart and drone-delivery provider DroneUp have ended on-demand delivery services in three markets as the partners focus on growing the service in Dallas.     

DroneUp is closing 18 Walmart delivery centers in Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Tampa, the company confirmed. These locations were part of an initial roll-out of 34 stores providing drone deliveries and some layoffs are expected.

“Layoffs are an unfortunate part of a business that is literally defining its own industry,” a company spokesperson told IoT World Today.

Following the closures, DroneUp would continue providing deliveries at 15 Walmart stores: 11 in Dallas, three in Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, and one in Virginia Beach.

Looking ahead, the company is focused on a scalable last-mile delivery platform it calls Ecosystem, a key component of which is the Destination Box (DBX), a secure, climate-controlled locker for package pickup and drop-offs.

The platform also includes cloud-based software that allows much of the flight to be automated, with a single operator monitoring multiple drones traveling beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Ecosystem also includes a new drone capable of reaching speeds of 60 mph, traveling up to 30 miles and carrying its cargo in a weatherproof fuselage.

Related:Walmart, Wing Expand Drone Deliveries in Texas

“The lessons we have learned in the last several years have informed a strategy to reshape the last mile of delivery with DroneUp’s Ecosystem platform that is economically feasible for sellers and scalable for buyers,” the company said.       

For its part, Walmart plans to continue growing its drone-delivery operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where it is expanding deliveries to more than 30 towns and municipalities with drone-delivery providers Wing and Zipline. The service is capable of making deliveries to 75% of the area’s population, Walmart said when it announced the expansion in January.

“Our drone-delivery program is still a pilot and by focusing our efforts in Dallas-Fort Worth, we can learn more about the potential to scale this innovative delivery option for Walmart’s customers,” said a Walmart spokesperson. “We’ve completed over 50,000 drone deliveries since launching the program and have seen customers integrating the delivery option into their daily lives.”

Walmart is not the only retailer taking its deliveries to the sky. In the United Kingdom, Amazon was just selected by the country’s airspace regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, to participate in a trial BVLOS drone-delivery program later this year. The aim of the program is to gather safety data, including on how drones detect and avoid other aircraft, with a focus on the electronic signals they send to be visible to other airspace users and air traffic controllers.

Related:Walmart Expands Drone Delivery to 1.8 Million More Texas Households