‘Drone delivery is now normal in Logan’

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“Every time we go to a new suburb, it’s exciting, because people are experiencing it for the first time. But if you live in the suburb of Crace, Canberra, then we’ve been there for just about three years. It’s part of normal life now. If you’re in Crace and you’re out of tea bags, you just order them by drone, without novelty or fanfare. Nowhere else in the world is this been normalised. Last time we spoke, we were on the cusp of announcing Grand Plaza. This rooftop concept is new for us and new globally, but it’s been wildly popular. We’re already at capacity, so for the merchants we deliver for are keeping busy. In fact, they’re having to put on extra staff just to keep up with the demand. We started doing five days, but pretty quickly we’ve extended to a seven-day service and we’re already having to expand that footprint. Our merchants there are Boost Juice, Sushi hub, Origin Kebab, TerryWhite and Chatime but we have much more interest there than we can handle. We’re actually improving the infrastructure at Grand Plaza so we can put more drones there for new and existing merchants. 

“We’ve brought the drones to the merchant, rather than the other way around. We always knew that would be a model we wanted to try, but we thought, ‘How do you do that because the drones always need to take off and land?’ For a number of merchants, their parking lots might not be big enough to facilitate it, or they might not have room in a loading dock out back. A rooftop was always an interesting proposition because it’s unused space. Grand Plaza existed within the area we had approvals for, and [the owners] Vicinity was really excited and enthusiastic straight off the bat. It’s almost like they were waiting for our call. We like working with people who share the excitement that a company like ours has in drone delivery. Pretty quickly, they worked out the part of the roof that would be well suited logistically and well placed to receive packages, which have to ride from the centre itself to its rooftop. They made it a seamless operation. 

“There’s a lot of roof space in Australia and around the world, so it’s a good way for merchants in shopping centers to meet their existing customers in new ways, but also to find new customers. Maybe you don’t live a quick walk or drive from the mall? Maybe you live 5, 6, 7 kilometers away and you wouldn’t normally drive there to pick up an item? It’s been very exciting to see it work. We had high hopes for it, but really, once we’ve deployed it, it’s been incredibly successful for everyone working through it and involved. 

“Last year, we ended up doing well over 100,000 deliveries in Australia, but in just the first two weeks of this year, we’ve managed 10,000 orders. The growth in existing areas is going to continue and there are other large LGAs in south-east Queensland we’re talking with, as well as in Canberra. We will look to grow the number of people who have access to drone delivery, as well as the model of locating drones with merchants. Once you can do that, it opens up a whole new world of who can actually have access to drone delivery. 

“I think different operators will soon use drones to do different things. The regulator is getting to that point by doing more approvals and I think the government’s getting to that point, too. Late last year, we announced we were going to launch in Dallas, Texas, which is a humongous market, and a humongous city in the US. So, I think you’re just going to start seeing that growth happening more and more and certainly at Wing we’re excited to see others grow. 

“I stand by my earlier statement: Logan is the drone delivery capital of the world and I think that will be the case for some time. What was interesting about working in Queensland, and working in Logan, was that they took a pretty big leap to work with a company like ours to make this possible. Because at the start, there weren’t many things to point to. They have their drone strategy, which was a really good body of work for us to lean on, and to use to tell our board and Alphabet [Wing and Google’s owner] that this was where we were going to invest. And this is where we’re really going to look to prove this type of model can work. I think Alphabet is very excited by the progress we’ve shown. And, frankly, that progress, a lot of that progress, has taken place in Logan city. So, Logan is on the map for the people that review our work. 

“We’re not as far away from picking up goods directly from shops as you think. Our drones already fly autonomously. They’re already flying set routes that we know to be safe, and they can follow those routes, right? Charting a safe route from where the drone takes off to a customer’s house is something we’ve already done. So the extra step you’re talking about is essentially making a pit stop along the way and that’s straightforward from a navigation point of view. There’s training required to do it safely but it’s not highly technical. It’s the same package every time, it’s the same hook from the drone every time. It’s the same process to load every time. If you do delivery by ground, it might be different each time but for us, it’s universal. Today, the packages are loaded by Wing employees, but that will change. I feel confident soon the merchant will play a larger part, which will make drone delivery accessible for more people.

“The pandemic in Australia meant a lot of people made their very first e-commerce purchase. And I think for a good number of those people, it probably went well, right? Their credit card wasn’t stolen, the package showed up the day it was supposed to. That behaviour kind of becomes embedded a little bit and we saw the same with drone delivery where we had a lot of activity during lockdown – we would always have hundreds of new customers come on board every time. But what we didn’t see is it go all the way back down. It might dip a little bit. But really, then those customers who tried drone delivery found it convenient, had that instant gratification and had a package delivered with no human contact and without any drama. That behaviour then sticks with you a bit. So I think that trend is going to continue where – whether it’s by drone or by truck –people are going to order more things online. 

“I think the possibilities are kind of endless here. What we do well is autonomous drone delivery: we’ve built a drone that can fly itself to deliver a package and a system that can make it happen safely. But the more we exist here, the more customers will start to dictate. That’s the model that will work best. I think we will continue to deliver things. But what’s in that box will be driven by merchants like Vicinity or retail groups that have innovative thinking and ideas, and by a customer base that are very comfortable with drone delivery because they’ve had it for years. 

“There’s a worksite in Queensland where they’re building a series of homes. We’re not delivering to the homes, we’re delivering to the people who are building the homes. And so we’re delivering their tools and hardware when they run out of something or their food during lunch. We didn’t originally think we’d be moving hammers and screws with drones! We have a hardware store we deliver for in Logan. As long as the product weighs what it does and fits in the box, we can deliver it. Tradies probably have the power tool, but they can run out of painter’s tape. We had a customer reach out who runs a landscaping business, and they constantly ran out of the Whipper Snapper line. So we stock that now. We deliver it to that lawn maintenance person when they run out of it, which means they don’t have to take the whole rig full of lawn mowers and gear to a parking lot to buy one. If you’re that tradie in Logan, they just build it into their thinking in their day. 

“You don’t need a countrywide system to regulate drone delivery, but you do need similar standards. With traditional aviation traffic management, all the aircraft are going to the same airport, and they just have to be slotted. But what’s happening here is completely different. Drones are not all taking off and landing from the same place, so it’s not nearly as uniform. Plus, people might be doing different things with their drones, so while we are using them for delivery, other companies will be using theirs for agriculture survey work or whatever it might be. What has to occur, in our opinion, is not a centralised system. In fact, we worry about that, because we think that will really hinder innovation. If you only have one government-run centralised system, that system to account for all the various uses that drones have, I think will be overly complicated and burdensome. You can probably not add too much value, but the standards do have to stay the same. It will be like driving – you don’t notify the government to tell them your route every time you get in your car, but you do stop at every stop sign, and follow the speed limit. We would actually advocate for a similar system for drones.”