Flytrex just made a move that separates it from most other drone delivery operators in the U.S.: it’s manufacturing its drones in the same city where it delivers food.
The company announced Thursday the opening of a drone manufacturing and maintenance facility in Pilot Point, Texas. The city is considered part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (where Flytrex has been running delivery operations for some time now). The nearly 8,000 square foot facility will assemble, test, and maintain drones entirely on-site, with a production capacity of approximately 1,000 drones per year as it scales. It’s currently staffed by 20 local employees, with plans to grow to 50 as the facility expands.
The facility will produce the Sky2 — Flytrex’s new delivery drone that I covered last month when it launched in partnership with Little Caesars. The Sky2 carries up to 8.8 pounds — the largest payload capacity of any food delivery drone operating today — which is what made the Little Caesars partnership possible in the first place.
Why this “local manufacturing” strategy is different
It’s unlikely that a drone delivery operator in the U.S. would manufacture their hardware in the same exact region they fly in, but Flytrex is different. The company says its decision to co-locate manufacturing adjacent to the service area makes it so the entire supply chain from assembly to last-mile delivery is local.
Interestingly, Flytrex actually says it plans to replicate this model in every major market it enters. It says DFW is the proving ground, but the implication is that the company might make a nationwide network of local drone manufacturing facilities tied to local delivery operations. In doing so, it would create jobs and supply chain infrastructure in each market rather than concentrating manufacturing in a single facility.
“Dallas-Fort Worth is the proving ground for the future of drone delivery at scale,” said Amit Regev, Co-Founder and CEO of Flytrex in. aprepared statement. “Our strategy is to build a manufacturing and maintenance presence in every major market we enter, so the entire supply chain, from assembly to last-mile delivery, is local. That’s how we scale responsibly and sustainably.”
The company says having this manufacturing facility with allow its Dallas-area flights to grow further. Flytrex is targeting 60 delivery sites across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro by mid-2027, which would expand service to approximately 5 million residents.
In fact, Flytrex also this week announced plans to open a new site in Rowlett (an eastern suburb of Dallas), bringing DFW service coverage to nearly 200,000 people. An additional five to seven sites are expected to come online in Q2 and Q3 2026, with the broader 60-site buildout following through mid-2027.
White House orders to build drones in America
Flytrex’s approach comes out in the wake of a June 2025 White House executive order that directed federal agencies to prioritize American-made drones and strengthen the domestic drone industrial base. Since then, we’ve seen some other American drone companies lean in, such as Skydio with its $3.5 billion domestic manufacturing commitment.
What else has Skytrex been up to lately?
Flytrex has completed over 200,000 deliveries across the U.S. to date, which is still relatively few compared to competitors like Wing and Zipline. That being said, a 60-site DFW network would represent a massive step-change in operational density.
For what it’s worth, Flytrex has also made growth strides recently. There was the recent Sky2 launch and the Little Caesars partnership. Additionally, Flytrex is one of only four drone delivery providers in the U.S. with FAA authorization for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations (that’s the regulatory clearance that allows drones to fly without a visual observer on every flight, and it’s key to making delivery economics work at scale).
Flytrex also has active partnerships with both DoorDash and Uber Eats, which are the two largest food delivery platforms in the U.S. And alongside Wing (Google’s drone delivery company), Flytrex pioneered the first shared airspace framework — enabling autonomously coordinated flight paths for multiple operators serving overlapping communities.
Skytrex’s upcoming plans in DFW should be interesting to watch. 60 sites covering 5 million people in a single metro could be an interesting test as to whether delivery economics actually make enough sense to justify the infrastructure cost. Of course, whether that 60-site, 5-million-person target materializes by mid-2027 still depends on all sorts of factors including regulatory approvals, site permitting, partnership execution and market adoption. Still, the manufacturing facility opening in Pilot Point this week is a compelling signal of Flytrex’s expansion. I’ll be continuously watching.
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