Droning On And On

Even though we still have over three weeks before Christmas, if you have ever bought anything online in the recent past (read: most of the population), than you know time is of the essence. You see, even in this era of 1-day delivery, there are still a chance the item may not show up on time, no matter how much of a priority the shipping company claims they will give your packages. Plus if your online purchase history is anything like mine you know that you want to get those items in your hand sooner rather than later just to make sure that there are no issues with buying one thing and the company sending you a completely different item. That uncertainly make these next few days the height of tracking season. Tracking season are those days when no matter what else you may be working on with your computer, you always have one window open to the page for UPS, FedEx or the Postal Service so you can see exactly where your package is at that moment. Shipping companies have gotten much better at knowing where your items are at all times and have no problem letting you know either. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing. You see, when my items are still in Missouri it doesn't much matter. But I live a very short distance from a UPS center and it is super frustrating to wait all day for a package to be delivered when I know it is a 10 minute drive from my current location. I know the route is probably maxed out to be as efficient as possible, it just doesn't feel like it. If they would allow it, I would just drive there and pick it up but they discourage that sort of thing. (Before you say anything, I know this is how stores work. But if you know me you know I only buy an item online if I am certain I won't be able to get it from a nearby store.) The interesting thing is that in the future waiting for a delivery won't involve looking out at the street but up into the sky.

A couple days ago Amazon, the largest retailer on the internet, announced that they were going to experiment with drone deliveries. You can relax as these won't be the controversial, military-grade drones we so often see on the news. Instead they will be the much smaller drones which look and operate more like remote control helicopters than anything else. They have become quite popular in the last few years as one of the toys sold in high-end catalogs for people who already have everything. I'm not sure if these drones started out as toys or industrial machines, but either way they are being put to use all over the place. There have been examples of these drones being used for things such as television production, as sports networks such as CBS have talked about using drones instead of blimps at golf events. With that in mind it makes sense to explore other, more practical uses for them. But just in case you are worried about seeing drones carrying TVs through the skies, Amazon wants to start slow and just try using the drones to deliver small, light-weight packages. They have produced a very convincing video of how it would look and they contend it would be better for everyone involved as the drones don't use as much gas as large delivery trucks (but they would still need trucks for big items so no drivers would lose their jobs), they would be able to get your items to your house faster (which is really the only thing most people care about) and, frankly, it would look pretty cool.

As you would expect there are plenty of people who think this plan is fatally flawed and they may have a point. The first thing I would worry about is just who would be flying these things. The most obvious choice would be some 14 year-old kid addicted to video games but those guys have terrible impulse control. They'd probably have flashbacks to "Grand Theft Auto" and start dive-bombing people. I also wonder about just how this would work in the city with all the various power lines going down the street. It is not like the countryside would be much better. I can't help but think about someplace like my parents' house, which is surrounded by trees. Every one of those branches is another chance for a crash which would destroy any item on-board. (I don't care how quickly my new item gets here if it shows up in 10,000 pieces.) I'm not about to suggest you need to have a pilot's license to work as a delivery person but at the same time I wouldn't want just anyone flying drones over my house. The other big issue that I discovered while looking into these drones is that they don't appear to have a lot of flight time. The top-of-the-range model only appears to be able to fly for around 30 minutes. Even if Amazon was able to get a more robust model (and, who are we kidding, of course they can) I would question just how far they would be able to travel, especially with cargo. This idea loses a lot of its steam if they can only deliver things in a 5-mile radius. Even a big cargo van gets better gas mileage than that.

But the biggest reason this idea probably won't be taking flight in the near future is the fundamental question of just how badly do we need these items anyway? I mean, at some point isn't getting an item the very next day good enough? That question becomes even more rhetorical when you remember that we are talking about small, light items. I mean, how quickly do you need Season 4 of "Friends" to arrive? I understand that we all have different priorities, my point is just that these drones won't exactly be delivering life-saving medical technology (actually, using these drones to deliver medical supplies to areas that are tough for a typical delivery truck to get to would be a much better idea) so why not work on other things first? For example, this new delivery system wouldn't combat the biggest problem of all, which is when packages are stolen before the people come home from work. If anything I feel safe in assuming a hovering, whirling drone would only serve to attract more attention for any would-be thieves. So for all those reasons I don't expect drone delivery to be the wave of the future and I'm not sure Jeff Bezos does either. This idea is so crazy that I can't help but wonder if, like Elon Musk with the HyperLoop, Bezos is just throwing crazy ideas out there because he is a billionaire and people have to listen to him, so he wants to see just how crazy he can go before getting called out on it. Of course, when you recently spent $250 million to buy a newspaper even though you made most of your money via the very thing which killed newspapers (and did so without a hint of irony) it could be said revealing a plan for robots to deliver packages from the sky is the most sane thing you've done in a while.