Data collection points to strong future for autonomous trucking

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A review of data collected during several round trips completed recently by a driverless truck between Dallas and Atlanta would seem to confirm the business sense – and inevitable future – of autonomous trucking.

Kodiak Robotics Inc., which recently launched plans for regular movement of freight by driverless truck between Dallas and Oklahoma City, and which already has established routes between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston and between DFW and Austin and San Antonio, said this week that it has teamed with U.S. Xpress to launch Level 4 autonomous freight service between DFW and Atlanta.

Level 4 autonomy describes a vehicle capable of continuously monitoring the driving environment and “overseeing” all driving tasks without human guidance.

According to a release, a Kodiak truck pulling U.S. Xpress trailers completed four round trips, covering approximately 6,350 miles, delivering eight commercial loads between Dallas and Atlanta in late March. The truck ran almost continuously for 131 total hours, or nearly five-and-a-half full days.

“The results represent a more than 100% increase in utilization compared to a traditional truck and professional driver with 11 hours of service limit,” Kodiak said. “By increasing the number of hours a truck can be used per day to 20-plus hours, autonomous trucks will allow carriers to haul more freight with fewer trucks, increasing revenue while decreasing costs.”

A rotating team of four Kodiak safety drivers monitored the pilot runs.

“This pilot demonstrated to our operations teams and our customers the benefits that can come with autonomous technology,” U.S. Xpress President Eric Fuller said. “We fundamentally believe that Kodiak’s autonomous technology will allow us to scale our fleet while increasing truck utilization compared to a human-driven truck. Our strategic partnership is helping both of our teams identify ways to quickly integrate and scale autonomous technology into our fleet once it is commercially available.”

The route between Dallas and Atlanta is a perfect entry point for continuous autonomous operations because it’s slightly longer than what a driver is permitted to operate in a day but too short to economically run as a team, Kodiak said.

“Our partnership with U.S. Xpress marks our service expansion to the East Coast,” company founder and CEO Don Burnette said. “Having the capacity to sustain 24/7 operations across the more than 750 miles between Dallas and Atlanta – two of our nation’s busiest freight hubs – represents a giant step forward.”

Kodiak has been delivering freight daily on a 240-mile route from Dallas to Houston since mid-2019, and on the 280-mile route between Dallas and San Antonio since mid-2021. It recently announced the launch of commercial operations between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

The company’s “Kodiak Driver” technology incorporates light-detecting ranging, or LiDAR, sensors, full-range radar, 360-degree scanning, and numerous cameras that capture and process hundreds of megabytes of “perception data” each second. Technologies allow the truck to “see” long-range and around the vehicle in a variety of weather conditions, according to the release.

“Kodiak and CEVA (Logistics) are focused on serving Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Oklahoma City, because they cover some of the richest freight corridors in the U.S,” Burnette said in February.

In the same release, CEVA described establishing service between Oklahoma and Texas as a critical step in achieving its long-term goal of integrating Kodiak’s technology into its North American truck fleet.