what about delivery truck as drone carrier?
when the truck is close to destination, drone(s) are detached to drop/pick package(s), only to return to the truck after finishing the work. this eliminates truck stops.
imagine a flying bee hive
when the truck is close to destination, drone(s) are detached to drop/pick package(s), only to return to the truck after finishing the work. this eliminates truck stops.
imagine a flying bee hive
I watched all the major carriers sending out multiple delivery dispatches a day through my neighborhood. To the point that the bottleneck appeared to be concurrency issues on driver time (as I tracked a few packages through the various systems). For my family, many of the packages fell within reasonable drone parameters and a lot of them had a significant pause time at local delivery base (e.g. UPS truck loading center or post ofice). I imagine a steady stream of drones from a temporary drone base would help lighten this load. Imagine sending a semi-truck that operates as a drone base to a big parking lot, appropriately located to be in a delivery dense area. A handful of employees does piloting and battery swapping and drone loading, while a delivery truck brings packages to the temporary hub. When the busy and/or overload time is over, the truck can go back home, or on to the next place expecting an overload. It wouldn't take a lot of saved overtime and seasonal labor costs to make this a win.
edit: I would also imagine that a lot of driver time during christmas anyway is wasted on traffic issues, part of which are compounded by them! Drones wouldn't have this so much.