calls “each’s,” or single items that
can be uniquely tracked around
the world inside UPS’s highly au-
tomated network. “We’re down to
each one—your shaving cream
to your front door,” he says.
To customers, the each’s system
brings new flexibility too. Using
UPS’s mobile app, it’s easy to
delay a delivery or reroute it to a
UPS store or other drop-off point.
Behind the scenes, the network
figures out where the package
is in the system and redirects it,
even contacting delivery drivers
in real time if necessary. UPS
has lately started incentivizing
customers via a rewards program
in the app to skip home delivery
in favor of picking up at its stores
(cheaper for the company).
An early riser who likes to get
to the office by 6 a.m., Price is
also responsible for UPS’s venture
capital investments in Silicon
Valley, covering such arenas as
drone startups, sustainability, and
automation. The entrepreneurs
there tend to sleep a little later,
he’s found. “You say, ‘Let’s meet at
8 o’clock,’ and they look at you like
you’re from outer space,” he says.
For a guy focused on the future,
Price’s office—right next-door
to Abney’s—is adorned with
a striking assortment of older
memorabilia, including an 1876
American flag and an 1826 copy
of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, that reflects his fixation on
American history.
Holding its own among the
older items, however, is an impor-
tant recent artifact: a single-page
certificate from the FAA granting
UPS permission to start its com-
mercial drone program. It was
the first such certificate that the
agency awarded for wide-scale
drone operations under its in-
novative Part 135 rule, and Price
credits UPS’s long reputation as
a steady and reliable corporate
citizen for winning the right to fly
experimental drones in previ-
ously untested ways. “They were
thoughtful about who they were
going to award the first full air-
line opportunity,” he says.oNE OF THE projects
where that opportu-
nity is taking shape
starts with a brown
metal box sitting in a
doctor’s office in Raleigh, N.C.
Decorated with only a small UPS
logo, the toaster-size box hardly
looks like the leading edge of a
technological revolution. But
whenever patients at the Raleigh
Medical Park have samples of
blood or urine taken for analysis,
the tubes of fluid end up in plastic
bags put into the box. Then, once
an hour, eight times a day, Monday
through Friday, a UPS employee
grabs the box, walks outside, and
attaches it to the underside of an
unmanned aerial vehicle—known
more commonly as a drone.
From a distance, this drone
looks like the four-bladed quad
copter models popular with
amateur flying enthusiasts. But
up close, it’s bigger—a lot bigger.
Called the M2 and made by Cali-
fornia startup Matternet, the craft
is nearly three feet across and
powerful enough to carry cargo
weighing up to 4.4 pounds. It also
carries heavy batteries that can
power long flights.
Once the box is locked in place,
the drone zooms almost straight
up to a 300-foot altitude, then
flies itself to a landing pad half a
mile away, across the campus of
the WakeMed hospital complex,
the central player in the health
care network that includes the
medical park. At the hospital, the
drone zooms down, locking on an
infrared signal on its landing pad.
Once it’s on the ground, another
UPS worker grabs the box and
walks it inside to the pathology
lab where the fluids get tested.
It’s a short journey, but it’s
already making money for UPS:
The company says it’s the first
revenue-generating commercial
drone delivery service in the coun-
try. Soon, UPS will take anotherIN
BUSINESS,
WHAT
GOES
AROUND
COMES
AROUND.
On the revolutions in energy, technology,
and sustainability.THE LOOP
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