
Please try another search
By Richa Naidu and Lisa Baertlein
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Walmart (NYSE:WMT) on Tuesday launched a delivery service for other merchants throughout the United States, an announcement that comes as goods sellers scramble to secure deliveries ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season.
Walmart has this year been trialing its first company-branded "last-mile" delivery vans, taking a page out of Amazon's play book as pandemic-led e-commerce demand pressures United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS), FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and the U.S. Postal Service.
Through its latest program, called Walmart GoLocal, Walmart will dispatch workers from its Spark delivery network to merchants' stores to pick up items and then deliver them to shoppers. Over the past year, the retailer has doubled Spark's coverage to more than 500 cities, Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said last week on an earnings call.
"We were looking at different potential revenue streams, ways to commercialize the capabilities and scale that Walmart has - and so we'll think about what that means as this program unfolds," said Tom Ward, senior vice president of Walmart's U.S. last mile business.
Walmart declined to give specifics about the program's fee structure, but said it would be "competitively priced."
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), the world's no.1 online retailer, delivers packages via a same-day service called Flex (NASDAQ:FLEX) and contracts with van fleets that drop parcels on doorsteps.
Walmart's move comes as traditional carriers are looking at another chaotic holiday season that, like last year, will see them struggling with more packages than can be delivered.
During the holiday peak season, there are expected to be some 5 million more parcels per day seeking delivery than providers able to handle that demand, UPS Chief Executive Officer Carol Tomé told analysts in July.
The company, which delivers packages for both Amazon and Walmart, recently said it was exploring super-fast local delivery apart from the pricey express deliveries offered by the company and rival FedEx.
By Toby Sterling (Reuters) - Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has agreed to take a 2% stake in Just Eat Takeaway.com's struggling U.S. meal delivery business Grubhub and will offer its Prime...
OSLO (Reuters) - All oil and gas fields that were affected by a strike in Norway's petroleum sector are expected to be back in full operation within a couple of days, Equinor said...
By Jonathan Stempel and Jessica DiNapoli NEW YORK (Reuters) -Ben & Jerry's on Tuesday sued its parent Unilever (NYSE:UL) Plc to block the sale of its Israeli business to a local...
Are you sure you want to block %USER_NAME%?
By doing so, you and %USER_NAME% will not be able to see any of each other's Investing.com's posts.
%USER_NAME% was successfully added to your Block List
Since you’ve just unblocked this person, you must wait 48 hours before renewing the block.
I feel that this comment is:
Thank You!
Your report has been sent to our moderators for review
Add a Comment
We encourage you to use comments to engage with other users, share your perspective and ask questions of authors and each other. However, in order to maintain the high level of discourse we’ve all come to value and expect, please keep the following criteria in mind:
Enrich the conversation, don’t trash it.
Stay focused and on track. Only post material that’s relevant to the topic being discussed.
Be respectful. Even negative opinions can be framed positively and diplomatically. Avoid profanity, slander or personal attacks directed at an author or another user. Racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination will not be tolerated.
Perpetrators of spam or abuse will be deleted from the site and prohibited from future registration at Investing.com’s discretion.