DHL Becomes First To Deliver Post With Drones

Germany’s Deutsche Post DHL on Monday has said it is the first postal service to successfully deliver packages to customers by drone.

DHL said that between January and March customers in the Bavarian village of Reit im Winkl were able to send and receive packages using drones.

The operation charted 130 successful autonomous drone deliveries, several of which involved heavy loads, long distances and navigating difficult mountainous terrain.

“We are the world’s first [postal service] to use a transport drone for end customer deliveries,’’ DHL head Juergen Gerdes said.

Gerdes said that during the trials the service was able to deliver urgently needed medicine or last-minute sports equipment in as few as eight minutes, reports dpa.

Several U.S. companies, including Amazon, Google and Wal Mart, have long been working on drone delivery methods, leading to numerous claims of the “first” successful drone delivery.

Report says the German postal service, which employs 340,000 people around the world, aims to use drones to access less-populated areas.