Google offshoot joins with Walgreens and FedEx to launch drone deliveries within a month
One of the nation’s largest drugstore chains and a shipping service giant are joining forces with Alphabet Inc.’s Wing to begin a first-of-its-kind drone delivery service in October.
Walgreens, FedEx Corp. and Wing, an offshoot of Google that was the first U.S. drone operator to receive partial certification as an airline, will begin the exploratory deliveries in the small town of Christiansburg, Va., the companies said in an announcement Thursday.
The companies aim to go beyond the small-scale delivery demonstrations that have occurred so far in the U.S., typically in controlled environments conducted over short ranges, they said.
“Wing has spent the last seven years developing a delivery drone and navigation system for this purpose,” Chief Executive Officer James Ryan Burgess said in the release. “By delivering small packages directly to homes through the air in minutes, and making a wide range of medicine, food and other products available to customers, we will demonstrate what we expect safer, faster, cleaner local delivery to look like in the future.”
Amazon.com Inc. has unveiled a revolutionary new drone — part helicopter and part science-fiction aircraft — that the company expects to use for test deliveries of toothpaste and other household goods starting within months.
The announcement is a sign of the rapid maturation of the drone industry, as multiple titans of industry race to find their place in what could become a transforming technology. At the same time, the U.S. government hasn’t created a regulatory structure or formal safety standards for small, low-flying drone operations, so such demonstrations continue to be conducted using waivers to existing rules.
Wing has conducted demonstrations of how its deliveries would work, including lowering a Popsicle to a toddler in Virginia last year. But the project with Walgreens and FedEx is designed to send actual merchandise to customers on a far bigger scale.
The demonstration project is being conducted near the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and is associated with the Mid-Atlantic Partnership, one of the groups selected by the U.S. government as testing entities for drone commerce. While demand grows for the use of drones to deliver goods and perform many industrial functions, the Federal Aviation Administration is still in the process of developing regulations to govern them.
Wing is one of the leading companies in the race toward having robotic unmanned craft zip through the sky to people’s homes to drop off goods and has received waivers to allow longer-range flights.
Amazon.com Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc. are also developing delivery services. A number of smaller companies, including
Flirtey Inc. and Zipline International Inc., are doing demonstration projects or have made deliveries in other countries.
The partnership among Wing, Walgreens and FedEx has benefits for all three in the race to exploit the drone economy.
Walgreens, a division of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., and other large drugstore chains have watched as Amazon and other online retailers have chipped away at their sales; the convenience of a brick-and-mortar pharmacy a short drive away has been supplanted by a package delivered to a customer’s front door. Amazon has also moved into the prescription drug business, offering patients conveniently packaged pills through its PillPack unit.
As the pilotless flying wing came in for a landing, winds suddenly picked up.
In response, the drugstore chains have begun offering competing services. Walgreens offers a delivery service for prescriptions and has partnered with FedEx to use its stores as package drop-off points. It’s also partnered with Kroger Co. on a pilot program for customers to pick up groceries at Walgreens stores.
The partnership with Wing gives FedEx leverage to compete against UPS, which is using the small flying devices for revenue-generating healthcare deliveries, such as blood samples, within a hospital campus in North Carolina.
UPS is also seeking FAA authorization to operate like a small airline and expects to get that designation soon. UPS Chief Executive Officer David Abney has said the focus of drone deliveries would be the healthcare industry at first, and then the company would expand from there.
