Autonomous trucks are officially running between Houston and Oklahoma City.
This is the first commercial autonomous trucking lane, or route, between the two cities, California-based Kodiak Robotics Inc. and Danish multinational shipping giant A.P. Moller - Maersk said Oct. 5. Kodiak said that its trucks had been delivering eight loads per week with a safety driver behind the wheel for Maersk customers since August.
Now, Kodiak trucks complete four round trips per week on a 24-hour-a-day, four-day-per-week basis. Customer products are loaded onto 53-foot trailers in Houston and brought to a distribution center in Oklahoma City.
"Hauling commercial freight gives us the opportunity to work together to integrate Kodiak's autonomous trucking solution into Maersk's operations,” Doug Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said in a news release.
Michael Wiesinger, Kodiak’s vice president of commercialization, said in an email to Houston Inno that the company anticipates driverless runs to begin by the end of 2024.
“In general, we plan to begin driverless operations when we have completed our safety case, our comprehensive demonstration that our system is safer than the average human truck driver,” Wiesinger said.
This latest move is not Kodiak's first foray into Texas. Kodiak has been delivering freight in the Lone Star State since mid-2019.
In October 2022, Kodiak and Swedish furniture giant Ikea partnered to deliver supplies from Ikea’s Houston-area distribution center to its Dallas-Fort Worth area store.
The Houston-DFW route has become a popular location for self-driving pilot programs. Companies such as FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) and Wayfair, a popular home e-commerce retailer, have also partnered with autonomous trucking companies on such pilots.
"The Dallas-to-Houston route is one of the busiest freight corridors in the country and is an ideal route for us to prove out our technology," Weisinger said. "We have also worked closely with the Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Department of Public Safety during our operations in Texas."
Meanwhile, companies such as Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. have been expanding their Texas infrastructure. Aurora, which partnered with FedEx for the shipping company’s pilot, opened a commercial-ready terminal for autonomous trucks in Dallas in April with eyes on the Houston-DFW corridor.
Volvo Autonomous Solutions, part of Sweden-based Volvo Group, also opened a Dallas-area office this year and announced plans to expand its footprint in the Dallas-Houston trucking routes.
An August 2023 report from Global Market Insights said the autonomous trucking industry had a 2022 U.S. market value of $301.2 billion and a compound annual growth rate of 15% over the next decade as the transportation and logistics industry seeks to increase efficiency. The report said that as demand rises, companies will seek to move past the requirements of a human driver.
Autonomous vehicle technology has seen both support and pushback at the policy level across the country. In May 2023, California’s state legislature considered a bill that would have required self-driving trucks to have human operators on board, though California Gov. Gavin Newsom eventually vetoed the bill. Meanwhile in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott in 2019 authorized TxDOT to create the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Task Force to serve as a hub for the state’s activity in developing AV technology.
