GarryP

Delivery Drone R&D continues, this time with what I think is a lucrative market of food delivery.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ural-australia

Interesting to see Google are concentrating on longer distances.

Beoz

The only reason Guzman y Gomez and Chemist Warehouse want to get into this market is to tap into the rural areas they currently don't service. More profit which equals more jobs.

No interest in urban areas. Can't fly drones in urban areas anyway.

Shard

Very cool ! Hadn't heard of GYG...any good ? I don't know if people would drone order burritos though, seems a bit OTT. Medicines make sense. I like the idea of lowering the package down.

GarryP

I think food may well be a good earner. You already have delivery service (so can cut costs via cutting jobs Beoz), the weight is inside your envelope, there is a premium on speed, and if you major on drone delivery you don't have to be in overpriced mall locations (note the cargo container in the video). You can also automate the whole thing (re previous automated fast food restaurant discussion).

What's more, you can use GPS on phones to drop food EXACTLY where the customer is - and that will be a real USP.

The google approach is probably going to be less optimal than the quadcopter approach for close in suburban, but I guess google think the tech will read across almost directly (they are probably right), so they can offer a complete package.

Beoz

I peronally know one of the owners of Guzman y Gomez. Lowering cost is low priority for the management and high priority in selling more and more burritos.

From there initial startup in low a rent high street store front, expanding to high rent westfields and city food courts, if their interest was in cost cutting, their expansion and wealth creation would have taken a different direction.

See cutting costs is finite. Making money is infinite.

Why do you do this to yourself.

ozzieeagle

Drone delivery is a flight of fancy, scuse pun.

The problem is volumes, which the future worshippers fail to recognise as a problem or issue with the other issue being packaging.

Auto-delivery has taken another step back at Aus Post this week, as they realise miscellaneous duties in relation to automation is a far far bigger factor than they had realised. I suspect this problem is rearing its head across every company that deals with logistics. Thus far their investment has exposed the lack of built in time for miscellaneous duties, which has blown out with the increase in equipment used by the machines.

Miscellaneous equates basically to equipment handling.

Shard

Tell Amazon about the "packaging problem". Drones are not a panacea, but they will increasingly have their place.

ozzieeagle

Well packaged goods like Amazon are probably less than 15 pct of the total amount of parcels that Aus Post handles..Thing is it all gets mixed up together with the poorly packaged items. People don't realise the reality of what happens in logistics. Once it's mixed with the rest of the 10,000s of parcels its well packaged status looses effect.

scrubbedexpat098

As you're a man in the know, could you hurry them up for me, I ordered a record from the Ukraine nearly 6 weeks ago, and still nothing

Shard

Probably shot down by the Russians.

GarryP

Two things.

First, drone delivery scales better than "a man with a van" - you can mass produce the drones and add more as demand requires. It's also not time of day dependent. Upshot is volume is less of a problem than it is for auspost (who we know can't deal with the rate they have, let alone a Christmas).

Second, if you are automating things you DON'T include people if you can help it. You remove them from the process at all stages, such that you can scale successfully. Part of the problem with online ordering in Australia is that they seem not to have grasped this - get the man out of the loop, and certainly out of the critical path, as much as you can.

ozzieeagle

I'd say this factor alone is at least 30 years away from being fixed, purely and simply because of scale of investment required.


IE: They need one of these centres within drone flying distance to be fully automated...... Then there's the 10,000's of items in the air to contend with coming out of these centres.



Show me a company that can afford to build 100's ( 200 to 300 including mini centres / Drone Hubs) of these centres across Australia then I'll agree that full automation is possible. With or without drones. Currently Aus Post are handling at least 40 Million parcels per year, more if you include the Postie handled stuff, so thats circa 60 million currently.

Like I said I dont think people are getting the volumes.... Imagine just half that amount flying around.... By the time drones come to the fore the demand will be for at least that 60 million figure and that's just Post.

GarryP

60m pa = 165,000 pd
Let's say from your figures 300 hubs = 550 parcels per day per hub?
Be conservative and say 1 delivery per drone per half hour, and 14 hours per day per drone = 28 deliveries per drone = 20 drones per hub.

Let's say $4k per drone = $80k. Plus say $50k for the hub (mass produced) = $130k
for 300 hubs = $39m

Sure if you do it badly you can run up those bills. But if you can scale then you can get economies of scale that make it very possible.

Try working out what a man with a van costs - you might be surprised.

ozzieeagle

I think your figures are way out on the hubs..... Preston alone is worth at least 10 million dollars.... Sure building a hub there is feasible, there is no way it would cost 50K or 500K more like 5 million bucks minimum. They would get access to 100K per day deliveries from a point like that though. I doubt the many high rise neighbours would like the constant whizz of the Drones though.

GarryP

I was taking your figures - which yielded 550 parcels per day per hub.

If your big hub deals with 100k parcels a day, then that's 181 times bigger, or scaling the cost, 181*$50 = $9m for your oversized hub.