Amazon stated that it will no longer use Prime Air to send packages in Lockeford, California. The town in Central California, with 3,500 people, was the company’s second U.S. drone delivery spot after College Station, Texas. The company made its operations public in June 2022.
The big store won’t say much about the loss; they’ll only say, “We’ll offer all current employees opportunities at other sites and will continue to serve customers in Lockeford with other delivery methods.” We’d like to thank everyone in the community for all their help and comments over the past few years.
Deliveries will still happen in College Station, and later this year, pickups will start at a new spot in Tolleson, Arizona. Tolleson is a city of just over 7,000 people in Maricopa County, which is in the western part of the Phoenix urban area.
With the arrival of Prime Air, Amazon users in the region can get their packages the same day, thanks to a combined processing center and delivery station. The business promises to reach out to affected individuals once the service resumes. We don’t know for sure when it will happen after “this year,” in part because we are still negotiating with local leaders and the FAA about what we need to do to get into the area.
The offering’s growth has been very slow, in part because of issues with regulations. For a lot of the project’s life, it looked like Amazon was just testing the waters of drone delivery, which hadn’t been done before. It appears that Tolleson will be the only new area to which the service travels this year. Any other news will have to wait until 2025. We don’t know yet if the company will get involved with California again.
Amazon did reaffirm its promise at the end of last year when it announced that it would deliver some Amazon Pharmacy orders in College Station in less than an hour.
Some local governments clearly see these kinds of deals as a way to show that they are open to new technologies in places other than the usual tech hubs like New York and San Francisco.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego says, “This kind of delivery is the future, and it’s great that it will start in the Phoenix Metro Area.” “The switch to package delivery with no emissions will help us clean up the air around here and make our city even more of a hub for new technology.”
