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DoorDash’s Drone Army Is Coming—Are Drivers About To Disappear?

DoorDash is preparing to take delivery beyond cars, bicycles, and scooters by developing its own drones and the infrastructure required to operate them. After years of testing aerial delivery through partners such as Alphabet’s Wing and Flytrex, the company has secured an important Federal Aviation Administration certification for commercial drone operations. DoorDash is also developing routing software, merchant handoff locations, remote operating systems, and autonomous ground vehicles such as Dot. The strategy raises an unavoidable question for the millions of workers who earn money completing deliveries: could machines eventually take their orders? The answer is more complicated than the headline suggests. Drones could be faster and cheaper for lightweight deliveries, particularly in suburban areas where traffic adds time and expense. However, weather, noise, regulation, payload limitations, apartment access, customer preferences, and operational reliability remain substantial obstacles.