After months of delay, Walmart has finally begun direct aerial package deliveries at three of its stores in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Customers that live within 0.8 of a mile from any one of the three stores can receive store goods weighing less than 10 pounds via drone – for a modest $3.99 service fee.   The drones fly without remote piloting but a Walmart employee must still be onsite to monitor the actual delivery.  The drone flies at 330 feet or more en route to its destination, then hovers at about 80 feet, automatically lowering its package into the customer’s backyard on a tether, before flying back to the store.

Virginia is just one of seven states where Walmart has teamed up with its UAV partner, Drone Up, which, not coincidentally, is also based in Virginia Beach.  The other six states are Utah, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Arkansas, which is the location of Walmart’s corporate headquarters), Walmart currently delivers hundreds of food items and small appliances to 36 of its stores in those states – with the largest number of sites in Arkansas (14) and Texas (11).  The most popular delivery items?  Hamburger helper and mac and cheese rank first and second  and the third, perhaps surprisingly, is kiwi fruit.

It’s no secret that Walmart, like Amazon, has struggled to get its drone delivery service, one of the first in the nation, up and running.  In fact, it wasn’t until the company partnered with Drone Up in 2021, and abandoned all hopes of developing its own UAV in house, that it began to make real progress.  Even so, its operation in some locales – for example, in Glendale, Arizona, a mid-sized inland city – has been plagued by recurring complaints from local residents about drone noise.  (Virginia Beach, which is home to a large US Naval base, may have an advantage in this regard.  Large jet aircraft regularly fly over the area).

Max Rrodriquez, a former US Navy officer, who helps oversee Walmart’s Virginia Beach drone operation, admits to past procedural delays and describes the company’s current roll-out as “crawl, walk, run.”  The company chose store outlets in small relatively unpopulated communities, hoping to minimize resident concerns.  Assuming the pilots succeed, Walmat is planning to seek FAA approval for flights in a larger 2 mile radius from its stores and to dispense with the need for a ground delivery support which greatly adds to the cost – and carbon footprint – of its flights.

Walmart’s fortunes appear to have improved following a 2022 visit by Governor Glenn Youngkin to Drone Up’s headquarters in Virginia Beach.  The governor toured the facility with company CEO Tom Walker and witnessed a drone flight in action.  The governor also awarded the company a special award for having hired a large number of military veterans.

“To have the opportunity to share with him what we are doing, I think is an acknowledgment of the effort of our team and it meant a lot to us,” said Walker after the visit.

Walmart claims to have made some 6,000 package delivery flights in the 7 states in 2022, far below the pace it had planned, even in the operation’s pilot phase.  The company still projects to make several million flights annually within two years, but industry observers suspect that goal may be optimistic.

Amazon currently delivers in just two locations – Lockerbie, California and College Station, Texas – and because of its past documented safety failures, the company still faces strict FAA operational guidelines (each flight is closely monitored, and must be paused near roads and highways) that has sharply limited the number of consumer deliveries to date.

Other drone delivery companies like Wing are zooming ahead of Walmart and Amazon but still face the same basic problem: scalability.  A report released by McKinsey late last year found that UAVs could only become cost effective relative to current road delivery vehicles delivery if drone companies could coordinate multiple drone flights over a large geographic area, possibly using a single flight controller.  Wing, with its established customer base, and thousands of flights under its belt. appears to be moving in that direction in Australia, but Amazon and Walmart still lag far behind.

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