Are Drones the Next Mail Truck? Amazon Thinks So

The idea is exciting enough by most anyone’s standards, that one day you could be absolutely anywhere, decide you’ve got a sudden hankering to read the next Stephen King novel, pull out your mobile device and order the book from Amazon and have it brought within minutes to your location by drone.

However, Amazon doesn’t figure that drone delivery will just be a clever gimmick. Amazon, according to reports from CEO Jeff Bezos, figures that one day, the drone will replace the mail delivery truck.

While in an interview with UK news institution The Telegraph, Bezos noted that, one day, Prime Air deliveries would be “…as common as seeing a mail truck.” He further noted that he expects the system to be in place in the UK before in the United States, because regulators in the UK were actually more open to the concept.

Bezos also claimed that the regulatory side was where the “biggest issue” could be found, as most of the technical problems were “very straight ahead.” Though Bezos didn’t come right out and say that the UK would get Prime Air before anyone else, he did note the overall environment, which was an important point.

Either way, though, it’s likely to be years before Prime Air delivers its first package, and Bezos even had a mention or two about how Amazon had plans to make a push into brick-and-mortar as well. These were still some fairly far-off plans, and Bezos noted that Amazon needed to figure out what it could bring to the brick-and-mortar market that would make it sufficiently unique.

Of course, the idea of brick-and-mortar alone would be unique enough for Amazon—be a great place to stage all those drones from, with each store acting as a kind of mini-warehouse to address some of the most common needs and least weighty products—but to actually open it up to the public would require something special to make it noteworthy.

Just what that something is is as yet unclear—there are only so many unique things that can be brought out about brick and mortar—but a physical store with Amazon’s level of inventory available that day, or within a couple days, would still be a big move.

We may well reach a point, soon, where we can get out our mobile devices, order and pay for an item, and have that item appear physically at our feet in minutes. It will take plenty of doing to get there, and Amazon will likely be leading the charge.