FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The capabilities and economics of drone delivery
DETAILS: A discussion on drone delivery and the economics of the new frontier of transportation.
INTERVIEWER and SPEAKER: Kevin Hill, executive publisher at FreightWaves, and Bobby Healy, founder and CEO of Manna, a drone delivery company operating in Ireland and the U.K.
BIO: Healy is a self-proclaimed tech guy. He founded Eland Technologies, which he sold in 2003 to SITA.aero. He then built CarTrawler, the world’s largest mobility marketplace for airlines, over the next 14 years. For the past three years, he’s been building Manna, making a three-minute, low-cost delivery service.
KEY QUOTES FROM HEALY:
On capabilities of drone delivery: “People get in their cars and drive some number of miles frequently. We can carry it right to their front lawn or to their rear lawn. We’ve delivered on top of trampolines, on top of cars, you name it. If it’s a flat 2-meter- or 2-yard-diameter space that’s inanimate, we can deliver a product to it.”
On delivery costs: “We’re already cheaper than the existing road-based solutions. The price we’re charging consumers now for delivery is between $5 and $6 depending on the outfit that we’re working with. That’s the final price the consumer will see. When we roll this out at scale, … our fully loaded cost will be about $1 per delivery.
On workforce utilization: “One Manna person can do 20 deliveries per hour. It’s one person operating multiple aircraft. As compared to road-based delivery, it would be one person with roughly two deliveries per hour. That’s an order of magnitude better.”
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