As the Holidays Approach, Walmart Launches Last Mile Delivery Service

CHICAGO, Aug.24 (Reuters) – Walmart (WMT.N) on Tuesday launched a delivery service for other merchants across the United States, an announcement that comes as merchandise sellers scramble to secure deliveries before the all-important holiday shopping season.

Walmart tested its first company-branded ‘last mile’ delivery vans this year, taking a page from Amazon’s playbook (AMZN.O) as e-commerce demand from the pandemic grows. pressure on United Parcel Service (UPS.N), FedEx (FDX.N) and the US Postal Service.

Through its latest program, called Walmart GoLocal, Walmart will send workers from its Spark delivery network to merchant stores to pick up the items and then deliver them to buyers. In the past year, the retailer has doubled Spark’s coverage in more than 500 cities, Walmart CFO Brett Biggs said last week on an earnings call.

“We were looking at different potential revenue streams, ways to market Walmart’s capabilities and scale – so we’ll think about what that means as this program unfolds,” said Tom Ward, vice-president. senior chairman of Walmart’s US last mile business. .

Walmart declined to give details of the program’s pricing structure, but said it would be “competitively priced.”

Amazon.com, the world’s # 1 online store, delivers packages through a same-day service called Flex and contracts with fleets of pickup trucks that drop packages right on their doorstep.

Walmart’s move comes as traditional carriers envision another chaotic holiday season that, like last year, will see them struggling with more packages than they can deliver.

During the peak holiday season, it is expected that there will be around 5 million more packages per day to be delivered than vendors able to handle this demand, said Carol Tomé, general manager of UPS, to analysts in July.

The company, which delivers packages for Amazon and Walmart, recently said it was exploring super-fast local delivery outside of the expensive express deliveries offered by the company and rival FedEx.

Reporting by Richa Naidu Editing by Chris Reese

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