• Home Depot just launched nationwide three-hour delivery, joining big box competitors Target and Walmart.
• The move raises the stakes on same-day fulfillment as retailers try to win more e-commerce sales.
• I ordered paper towels to test the speeds of all three, and Home Depot won in every measure except one.

Sometimes you just need it now.

Retailers are stepping up their same-day delivery options, with fulfillment speeds that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

The latest entrant to the competition is Home Depot, which launched a nationwide 3-hour delivery option last week. It joins big box competitors Target and Walmart in offering a 3-hour option supported by their own retail store fleets.

To see how the three services stack up, I came up with a simple test: order the same item from all three stores at exactly the same moment and see which one arrived first. My house is about 3.5 miles from each store, and I created brand new shopper profiles for this test.

I considered including Amazon as a benchmark, but the earliest available same-day delivery to my address was more than 5 hours later.

It ended up being fairly challenging to find a low-cost item that all three retailers had in stock and would still meet delivery minimums. My initial plan was to order a four-pack of Charmin toilet paper from each chain, but Target’s same-day services require a basket size of at least $35 to complete a transaction, no exceptions.

To include Target, I switched to a 12-pack of Bounty paper towels for $33.49, plus a pack of disinfecting wipes, nudging the subtotal to $37.48.

The same pack of paper towels was $0.30 cheaper at Walmart, and I noticed only after placing my order that baskets under $35 incur a $6.99 delivery fee. I was able to go back and add a similar pack of disinfecting wipes for $2.98 to eliminate that fee.

Walmart has a one-hour option for an additional $5, but since the other two stores only promise three hours, I opted for that one.

Home Depot was the simplest of the bunch. It has a $2.99 same-day fee, which is waived once the basket exceeds $25. The three-hour service is an additional $7, and I didn’t have to add any disinfecting wipes to clear a threshold.

The home improvement chain was off to a solid start.

At 12:11 p.m., I hit “place order” on all three shopping carts and started brainstorming uses for 36 jumbo rolls of paper towels.

To my great surprise, Home Depot pinged me 16 minutes later to let me know a driver was en route with my order. After another 12 minutes, they were in front of my house.

Having made many trips to this Home Depot location for “just one more thing,” I know 27 minutes is less time than it would have taken me to get this item myself.

About an hour later, at 1:43 p.m., I got a text that a Shipt shopper (Target’s fulfillment service) had collected my order and was on their way. Less than 20 minutes after that, the towels and wipes were on my doorstep.

Half an hour after my Target order arrived, Walmart texted to say my order was being picked and would arrive at 3:14 p.m.

I followed the driver’s icon on the order-tracking map and saw she had to make two drop-offs ahead of mine. Ultimately, she arrived at my house at 3:20 p.m., three hours and nine minutes after I placed the order.

It’s also worth noting that my Walmart order very well might have arrived first had I chosen to upgrade to express delivery, which the website said could arrive at my house in as little as 18 minutes for $5 more.

After reflecting on the timing, I was impressed with Walmart’s ability to land a delivery within a few minutes of when it initially said it would. This would matter even more if the order contained perishables like eggs, meat, or dairy that I wouldn’t want sitting in the August sunshine for two hours if I weren’t at home.

Still, in terms of speed, simplicity, and cost, Home Depot completely stole the show. It was the simplest to use for a new customer, it had the lowest order minimum, and it had the lowest three-hour service fee at $7, followed by Target at $9.99 and Walmart at $14.95.

Target and Walmart both offer memberships that significantly reduce (or eliminate) the same-day delivery fee as a perk.

One area where Home Depot came up short compared to Target and Walmart is the ability to easily provide a tip to drivers for their hard work. Walmart lets shoppers do this upfront, while Target allows customers to rate and tip after the delivery is complete.

Home Depot customers may need to use cash to show their appreciation to their driver for the time saved.

Now, what am I going to do with all these paper towels?