Walmart expands drone delivery to 3 more states

Walmart is expanding its drone delivery service to three more states as it competes with Amazon to be the fastest delivery service. 

In partnership with Google’s Wing, Walmart is expanding the service to launch at 100 stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Tampa, building on the existing operations in Northwest Arkansas and Texas. The retailer said that it’s the first to scale this service across five states – Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas – underscoring its aim to become a leader in tech-enabled retail. 

Wing flies its drones beyond visual line of sight of up to a 6-mile aircraft range from the store. The products arrive to customers in under 30 minutes, according to Walmart.  

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“People all around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex have made drone delivery part of their normal shopping habits over the past year,” the company said. “Now we’re excited to share this ultra-fast delivery experience with millions more people across many more U.S. cities.”

Walmart partners with Wing to offer drone delivery to more households in Texas. (Walmart)

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“This is real drone delivery at scale,” said Wing CEO Adam Woodworth.  

The company has conducted more than 150,00 drone deliveries since 2021 with Wing and drone delivery company Zipline. 

Zipline initially partnered with Walmart in 2021 to deliver items in Arkansas before expanding its reach. Meanwhile, Walmart and Wing began their partnership in August 2023.

A shot of a Walmart drone delivery.  ( Walmart)

Aside from done delivery, Walmart also launched Express Delivery, which also delivers products in 30 minutes, Late-Night Delivery, and InHome Delivery, which is when items can be placed inside someone’s refrigerator. 

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Meanwhile, Amazon has deployed its drone delivery services to eligible customers in College Station, Texas, and the West Valley of the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area. The company began testing its drone service in 2022. 

The company said in a May blog post that “now that we’ve made the process more streamlined and seamless, we are excited to continue to scale the service to reach more customers in the months and years ahead.” 

Amazon has been ramping up the speed of its Prime delivery. In a recent blog post, it said it set records for Prime delivery speeds in the first three months of 2024, with more than 2 billion items arriving the same or next day to Prime members around the world. In March, nearly 60% of Prime member orders arrived the same or next day across the top 60 largest U.S. metro areas, according to Amazon.