UPS uses hundreds of planes and thousands of trucks to deliver about 20 million packages a day and will start getting some help doing all that work from some self-driving minivans.
The delivery giant has teamed up with Waymo to test its fleet of autonomous vehicles to move packages. Waymo minivans will start driving residential and business shipments dropped off at UPS Stores around Phoenix and drive them to a nearby UPS sorting building for processing.
The vehicles will drive themselves, though a driver will be on board to keep tabs on things. The self-driving cars are expected to get packages into UPS’ network faster and more frequently, helping speed up deliveries. A UPS spokesman said there aren’t currently plans to use this program to deliver packages directly to customers’ homes.
Read the article at Road Show.
