What are the Benefits of Drone Delivery?

Make no mistake: Drone delivery is the wave of the future. A recent study by Clutch found that shoppers believe drone delivery could be cheaper and faster than the standard model, and the market is rising to make those expectations real. The biggest players in both the tech and distribution industries are investing with visions of fully operational drone delivery service just around the corner. 

So, why are drones good for delivery? For largely the same reasons that other forms of automation benefit the consumer! The benefits of drones are plentiful, from a positive impact on traffic  and environment to increased efficiency, savings, and even security for those who shop online. Let’s take a quick look at the benefits of drone delivery and the impact it could have on our world.

Drone Delivery Benefit #1: Less Congested Roads

It’s a fact we’ve shared before in a previous blog, but it bears repeating again: Amazon claims that 87% of its packages are under five pounds, making them the perfect weight and size for the kind of drone delivery that’s been cleared by the FAA. Imagine how much space on every Amazon delivery truck is taken up by packages light enough to be carried from a warehouse by a drone—that’s a lot of space to be freed up, especially as drone technology allows the devices to make longer and longer trips. That means larger packages can be condensed onto a smaller fleet of human-operated vehicles for hand deliveries. By taking advantage of the open sky above, distributors can ultimately reduce the size of their road-bound delivery fleets. Less congestion and less emissions—what’s not to love about that?

Drone Delivery Benefit #2: Quicker Delivery Times

With so many small packages ripe for robotic delivery, we can also expect delivery speeds to get quicker with the help of drones. For consumers within delivery zones close to distributor warehouses, it could become the norm that what used to be a 2-day delivery window shrinks to 1 day or less as drones allow human operators to deliver to a customer’s home without having to get there in person. For some logistics companies like UPS, drones are being explored as a last-mile delivery option . A driver will arrive at a neighborhood with several deliveries and allow a small fleet of drones based on the truck to complete multiple deliveries in the same area with ease, making one driver far quicker and expediting the entire process.

Drone Delivery Benefit #3: Cheaper Delivery Costs

Time isn’t the only commodity that will be saved as distributors rely less on gas-powered vehicles and more on autonomous drones. Of course, the electricity powering those drones isn’t free, but a drone can fly a more direct path to a customer’s home and use a fraction of the total energy at the same time. Between those savings and the efficiencies found by reducing the number of human couriers on the road at any point in time, distributors and consumers alike stand to benefit from lower delivery costs. At the same time, questions of the cost of drone liability insurance for shipping companies make this benefit unpredictable, yet full of potential.

Drone Delivery Benefit #4: More Secure Packages

The same Clutch survey found that a small portion of consumers (around 20%) have concerns about packages getting damaged during drone delivery or drones being hacked and packages stolen. This is certainly possible, but with the right innovations, drone delivery could be even more secure than today’s standard delivery methods. We’ve all fallen victim to a porch pirate or a delivery driver “misplacing” our items. How long do packages often sit out at someone’s front door waiting for them to get home and collect them? With DRONEDEK’s smart drone delivery mailboxes, drones can communicate with collection devices and secure packages behind lock and key waiting for collection.

Interested in learning more about the future of drone delivery and how DRONEDEK is paving the way for easy at-home collection of packages delivered from the sky? Visit our WeFunder Crowdfunding page and support our development to watch our progress in real time—and be the first home on your block ready to reap the benefits of drone delivery service.