Drone deliveries are becoming a reality for more people

ARTICLE – I recently read a news story about drone deliveries happening near me, right in the DFW area (see the Fox4 News video clip)!

The company Wing (a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet) is delivering select health and wellness items from a Walgreens in Little Elm to customers within four miles of the store. And Blue Bell is delivering ice cream to people within four miles of its facility in Frisco. Texas Health and EasyVetClinic are also working with Wing.

People who live in those small portions of Little Elm and Frisco can download the “Wing – Drone delivery” Android app or iOS app. The app allows you to share your location or enter your address to determine if they deliver there and checks to see if there is a clear area around your house to drop off a delivery. After that, I think the app will let you see the available businesses that participate and then order select items from one of those businesses to be delivered to your home.

There are other drone delivery companies that are delivering goods in other places. Wing is delivering in areas of Virginia and Flytrex is delivering in areas of North Carolina, just to name a couple.

What’s most exciting to me is that drones can and are being used to deliver medical supplies to difficult-to-reach areas. Zipline is delivering medical supplies to Japan’s Gotō Islands and Ivory Coast, and COVID-19 vaccines in Ghana. In Ghana, Zipline is “serving over 15 million people from six distribution centers…[and] has flown 13 million miles and delivered more than five million doses of vaccines, in addition to blood products and other essential medicines.” And another benefit of using drones for deliveries? A significant drop in carbon emissions!

I’m not sure if drones will be widely adopted to deliver goods to the average consumer, but the delivery of medical supplies to difficult-to-reach areas seems very promising – improving the health of our world and the world’s population! Amazing!