Postmates to Help Walmart Deliver Groceries the 'Last Mile'
Walmart and Postmates have teamed up to delivery groceries in Charlotte, N.C., with the aim of expanding Walmart's grocery delivery service to include 40% of U.S. households.
The pilot partnership is the latest move in the race to control online grocery shopping and delivery. The e-commerce giant Amazon led the charge last year when it purchased the grocery chain Whole Foods in December.
The new deal with Postmates will enable Walmart to overcome logistical hurdles that make local delivery difficult, said Dan Mosher, Postmate's senior vice president and merchant lead.
The delivery company has 160,000 couriers delivering products for 270,000 business in the U.S. and Mexico City.
Mosher said Monday in an interview on Cheddar that Walmart's position as one of the largest and most popular grocery stores in the United States made it an attractive partner for Postmates, which is fighting off challenges from well-funded delivery rivals.
One of the most vexing issues for retailers ー even the behemoth Walmart ー has been figuring out the proper logistics for the "last mile" of delivery, said Mosher.
Postmates is well positioned to help Walmart, he said, by relying on the delivery company's fleet of couriers and "an algorithm that is improving every day."
"We're doing things like batching orders and this is something that Walmart is really going to benefit from," said Mosher. "Going into those locations and picking up one, two, and three orders, and being able to really use software to drive down the cost and make that work financially."
Postmates has been feeling the pressure from rivals including DoorDash, which received an investment of $535 million last month led led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group. That investment could be used for DoorDash's international expansion.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/new-power-couple-alert-postmates-and-walmart-team-up).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
