AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Sometimes you look at the sky and see a cloud or a bird. Other times, you see a drone delivering a russet potato to the home next door. For a group of neighbors in a suburb of Houston, that was a common occurrence during a recent week. It's all thanks to Walmart's growing drone delivery program, part of the race between e-commerce companies to deliver products as fast as possible.
Nathan Edwards lives in the neighborhood where the potato drones took flight. He's also an editor for The Verge, where he recently wrote about this cutting-edge delivery technology. Welcome to the program.
NATHAN EDWARDS: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: So give us some background. How and why did potatoes begin taking flight in your neighborhood?
EDWARDS: All I can say is it's peak dad mode.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
EDWARDS: Almost a month ago at this point, one of my neighbors, fellow dad - he just added seven or eight of us to a group chat and he's like, hey, heads up, you can get Walmart drone delivery to your backyard. It's, like, 25 minutes. There's no delivery fee. And he had a video of it. And so I wanted to know - I was like, well, who says it has to be your own backyard? Can you order a drone to somebody else's yard?
RASCOE: Yeah.
EDWARDS: You know, just openly speculating in the group chat. Immediately, one of the dads, Will - he's like, Nathan, I'm just letting you know there's a potato headed your way. And by coincidence, another dad had also already sent a potato to Will's house.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Well, now, why the potatoes? Like, and how much did it cost to send this potato?
EDWARDS: I think a potato was just the funniest possible answer.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Was...
EDWARDS: Like, if you look at the things that you could order, they just both looked at the list and independently, were like, yeah, it's obviously potato.
RASCOE: This is Walmart doing this.
EDWARDS: Yeah. Yeah. The stuff comes from Walmart. It's - a company called Wing is their drone delivery partner. So you use the Wing app, but it gives you a list of lightweight, small items that are eligible for delivery. They're not charging you a delivery fee. They're covering the cost to try to drum up business, basically, and that's what Wing told me. That day, it cost about 82 cents. Those potatoes are 82 cents a pound, and the potato I got was probably about a pound.
RASCOE: Well, so you do mention in your article that obviously you were allowed to send deliveries to your neighbor's backyard without the app asking for permission. What did Wing have to say about that?
EDWARDS: Wing said, actually, as long as you have permission, you can send packages to your friends and neighbors just like you would through the mail. Their terms of service do ask you not to use it to harass or annoy people.
RASCOE: Are there cases where you think it would actually be useful to have this drone pick up whatever you need at Walmart and bring it to your house?
EDWARDS: I think in some cases, yeah. Like, a single small item like a - I don't know - a bottle of ibuprofen or something - a drone just being able to pick it up and go straight line of sight to your house and have it to you in 20 minutes - it certainly seems cheaper and more energy-efficient than having somebody drive over there, pick it up and bring it to you. It's also obviously cheaper for the companies 'cause they don't have to pay somebody to do it.
RASCOE: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I have kids, so I would just be worried about them trying to, like, attack the drone or catch the drone or hit the drone. You know what I'm saying?
EDWARDS: Or pull on the tether, yeah.
RASCOE: Or pull on (laughter)...
EDWARDS: Yeah, I've got kids too. And, you know, I told everyone, hey, stay out of the yard.
RASCOE: Stay out of the drone's way.
EDWARDS: Don't touch that.
RASCOE: Don't touch the drones. That's Nathan Edwards, an editor for The Verge. Thank you so much.
EDWARDS: Thank you for having me.
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