Zipline Adds Growing Number of U.S Clients, For Its New Drone Delivery Technology

U.S‑based Drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny, Zipline, is reg­u­lar­ly adding new clients to its Amer­i­can oper­a­tions, where it is bring­ing a “game-chang­ing” deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy in 2024, reports a press release. The lat­est out­lets are well­ness retail­er GNC, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal logis­tics firm Asso­ci­at­ed Couri­ers, and Seat­tle-based eatery Pagli­ac­ci Piz­za.

While, GNC is begin­ning deliv­er­ing orders via drone with­in 20 min­utes to cus­tomers in the Salt Lake City area using Zipline’s cur­rent Plat­form 1 sys­tem, fol­low­ing months of tests, the well­ness retail­er plans to expand its drone ser­vice to oth­er U.S. mar­kets next year using Zipline’s updat­ed and game-chang­ing Plat­form 2.

This also applies to Asso­ci­at­ed Couri­ers who aims to utilise a Plat­form 2 ser­vice to bring pre­scrip­tion drugs to res­i­dents of Long Island, while Pagli­ac­ci is to fly its prod­ucts to Seat­tle res­i­dents. The present Plat­form 1 sys­tem is cur­rent­ly being used by Sweet­green, Michi­gan Med­i­cine, Mul­ti­Care Health Sys­tems, Inter­moun­tain Health and the Gov­ern­ment of Rwan­da.

Zipline’s ultra-qui­et Plat­form 2 drones (designed to sound like rustling leaves) can drop a deliv­ery on an 18”x18” tar­get, whether a porch, yard or side­walk, as it hov­ers up to 400 feet over the tar­get, while a droid slides down a teth­er to deliv­er the pack­age. The drone is able to trav­el up to 24 miles from hub to des­ti­na­tion.

Alan Chester

Alan Chester, GNC’s Chief Sup­ply Chain Offi­cer, com­ment­ed, “We are focused on build­ing, test­ing, and for­ti­fy­ing inno­va­tion solu­tions that enable our busi­ness to sup­port our con­sumers on their path to achieve their goals. This part­ner­ship with Zipline will enable GNC to quick­ly and effi­cient­ly deliv­er our prod­ucts to help our clients stick to well­ness rou­tines and live well.”

Mean­while, Pagli­ac­ci Pizza’s col­lab­o­ra­tion attract­ed local media atten­tion last week. Seat­tle media out­let, Kiro7 offers a video on its web­site about the part­ner­ship, while news radio sta­tion KUOW, a pod­cast.

Kiro 7 Video (Top left cor­ner)

https://www.kiro7.com/news/pagliacci-pizza-announces-new-partnership-with-flying-delivery-system/BQ5NPIVTEJCBJH56J7Z3UVRIQ4/

Keller Renau­do Cliffton, co-Founder and CEO of Zipline, told KUOW, “Obvi­ous­ly, it seems pret­ty sci-fi and a lot of cus­tomers think this is total­ly insane when they first hear about it. But what has real­ly struck us is that there are about sev­en days of sci-fi mag­i­cal amaze­ment, and then on day eight peo­ple are basi­cal­ly bored of it — bored of it in the way that there’s no way they’re ever going back to the old way of receiv­ing things.

He con­tin­ued, “Any­body can pull out a phone, press a but­ton and place an order that can then be deliv­ered autonomous­ly to the home in a way that is 10 times as fast, half the cost, and ful­ly zero emis­sion com­pared to the way we do instant deliv­ery today.”

Matt Galvin

Mean­while, Pagli­ac­ci Piz­za­’s co-own­er, Matt Galvin, was report­ed as say­ing, “Plat­form 2 will enable us to scale our deliv­er­ies sus­tain­ably with up to 97 per­cent few­er emis­sions than cars, and where the piz­zas will remain hot. This is a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to expand upon sus­tain­able deliv­ery,”

He con­tin­ued, “We know our cus­tomers want deliv­ery, we know they want it to be fast. It’s not going to be sit­ting in a car for sev­en or eight min­utes, it’s going to be in a drone for as lit­tle as two min­utes.”

Drone deliv­er­ies will make it pos­si­ble to trans­port these prod­ucts with­in a 10-mile radius, includ­ing dif­fi­cult-to-reach loca­tions. The drones can car­ry up to two 13-inch piz­zas, some sides and drinks. Pagli­ac­ci said that since there’s no dri­ver, tips offered dur­ing drone deliv­ery will go to the kitchen staff.

Zipline’s new tech­nol­o­gy has been well cov­ered by evtolinsights.com. Please read the sto­ries below.

As ever these excit­ing endeav­ours for 2024 is con­tin­gent on gain­ing FAA approval for an oper­a­tions and safe­ty plan. That plan is in the works but not yet sub­mit­ted to the agency. The FAA may impose, for exam­ple, restric­tions tai­lored to Seat­tle’s busy air­space such as on flight alti­tudes, hours of oper­a­tion and places to avoid.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.flyzipline.com/