Walgreens starts drone delivery testing in Texas

Walgreens will begin flying packages by drone to residents in a pair of Texas cities in partnership with Google’s drone-making affiliate, Wing.

The companies said they will begin testing the service next week in the city of Frisco and neighboring Little Elm, two fast-growing communities north of Dallas where road traffic is “probably the biggest complaint we get,” said Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.

“Every delivery made by drone is taking a delivery vehicle off our roads,” Cheney said.

It will be Wing’s first commercial expansion in the U.S. after years testing the concept in a Virginia town and parts of Australia and Finland. The drone company is a subsidiary of Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet.

“We’ve gradually moved into denser and denser environments,” said Jonathan Bass, Wing’s head of marketing and communications.

Rivals including Amazon, Walmart and UPS have sought to get drone delivery fleets off the ground but the projects face technical and regulatory challenges. There’s also not much evidence that American consumers have been clamoring for airlifted packages, and many have expressed privacy, safety or nuisance concerns when asked to imagine the noisy machines over their homes.

Walgreens says about 100 store items will be available for delivery when the service rolls out in Texas in the coming months, including over-the-counter medication, snacks and cosmetics. Store employees will be take online orders and then loading items onto one of a small number of Wing’s 10-pound drones.