Drone delivery is so fast it can zip a pint of ice cream from Walmart to a customer’s driveway before it melts.

Yet drone delivery has also been slow to take off in the U.S. More than five years after commercial drone delivery began, it’s still found in only a handful of suburbs, and deliveries are made within a limited radius.

That could soon change. This month, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed a new rule that would make it easier for companies to use drones over longer distances out of the operator’s sight. Some companies do that now, but they had to obtain a waiver from the government, which is a cumbersome process.

At the same time, companies that have been testing drone delivery will soon make it available to millions more U.S. households. Walmart and Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, currently provide delivery from 18 Walmart stores in the Dallas area. By next summer, that will expand to 100 Walmart stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Tampa.

DoorDash recently announced an expansion into Charlotte after several years of testing in rural Virginia and Dallas. Zipline, which works with Walmart in Arkansas and Dallas, will soon expand to Seattle. Amazon launched Prime Air drone delivery in suburban Phoenix late last year and plans to expand to Dallas, San Antonio and Kansas City.

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said drone delivery has been in “treading water mode” for years, afraid to scale up because the regulatory framework wasn’t in place.

“You want to be at the right moment where there’s an overlap between the customer demand, the partner demand, the technical readiness and the regulatory readiness,” Woodworth said. “I think that we’re reaching that planetary alignment right now.”

Drone delivery seems very futuristic to those who haven’t seen it, said Harrison Shih, who leads DoorDash’s drone program as the senior director of DoorDash Labs. But in places where DoorDash has been using it for years, like suburban Brisbane, Australia, it has quickly become normal.

“It really does seem like part of everyday life,” Shih said.

Its cargo can be pretty mundane. Walmart, which has completed more than 150,000 drone deliveries since 2021, said its top items ferried by drone include ice cream, eggs and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Drones vary by company. But generally, an order is attached at a launch site and then the drone automatically finds a route that avoids obstacles. Drone pilots observe as the drones fly to their location and lower the order using retractable cords.

Wing’s drones fly up to 65 miles per hour at a height of 150 feet, and they can travel up to 12 miles roundtrip. They can carry packages up to 5 pounds. One Wing pilot can oversee up to 32 drones at a time.

Zipline has two types of drones: one can carry up to 4 pounds and fly 120 miles roundtrip while the other can carry up to 8 pounds but is limited to a 10-mile radius. The first type has been used to transport medical supplies to remote hospitals in Africa, while the second was designed for home delivery.

Drone delivery has big benefits, said Shakiba Enayati, an assistant professor of supply chain and analytics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Drones can bypass traffic, reduce emissions and improve access to goods for rural areas. Enayati researches ways that drones can speed critical health deliveries like blood samples.

But Enayati also sees plenty of obstacles. Right now, it costs around $13.50 per delivery to carry a package by drone versus $2 for a traditional vehicle, Enayati said. Drones need well-trained employees to oversee them and can only carry one item per delivery.

Drones can have a hard time flying in some weather conditions. Amazon said its Prime Air drone can fly in light rain but it won’t accept deliveries in all weather conditions.

Drones also have risks, Enayati said. They can have mid-air collisions or sensor errors or tumble to the ground. But road accidents happen every day too, and people have accepted that because they see the advantages of driving, Enayati said. She thinks the same thing could happen with drones, especially as technology improves and reduces the chance for errors.

“It’s not just about delivering eggs or baby wipes. It’s saving lives… it’s delivering to areas that are underserved,” Enayati said.

Woodworth said U.S. airspace is so tightly controlled that drone companies must prove must prove their safety and reliability before they can fly.

“That’s why it takes so long to build a business in the space. But I think it leads to everybody fundamentally building higher quality things,” he said.

Others worry that drones could potentially replace human delivery drivers. But Shih said that’s unlikely. For one thing, they’re not a good fit for many deliveries, like a 40-pound bag of dog food or an order in a dense city that’s better served by bicycle delivery. DoorDash has also found that when it launches drone delivery in an area, all types of orders tend to increase.

That’s been the experience of John Kim, the owner of PurePoke in Frisco, Texas. Kim signed on to offer drone deliveries through DoorDash in the spring of 2024. He doesn’t know what percent of orders are delivered by drone after DrooDash picks them up, but his DoorDash orders overall are up 15% this year.

Kim added that he’s had no complaints from drone delivery customers.

“It’s very stable, maybe even better than some of the drivers that toss it in the back with all the other orders,” Kim said. “I take a little bit of pride in the fact that a small restaurant like ours can do something this cutting edge or cool.”

For some, drones can simply be a nuisance. When the FAA asked for comment last fall regarding Amazon’s request to expand deliveries in College Station, Texas, numerous residents complained about the noise from the drones and the disruption they could cause to people and wildlife.

“It sounds like a giant nagging mosquito,” one respondent wrote. Amazon has since released a quieter drone.

But others love the service. Janet Toth of Frisco, Texas, said she saw drone deliveries in Korea years ago and wondered why the U.S. didn’t have them. So she was thrilled when DoorDash began providing drone delivery in her neighborhood.

Toth now orders drone delivery a few times a month. Her 9-year-old daughter Julep said friends often ask to come over and watch the drone.

“I love to go outside, wave at the drone, say ‘Thank you’ and get the food,” Julep Toth said.