Dallas has become one of the leading domestic markets for freight companies seeking to test and develop driverless technologies.
A combination of favorable weather and critical freight corridors makes the city attractive to some companies.
“[I]t’s hard to envision a place that would be better to launch autonomous trucks,” said Ossa Fisher, president of Aurora Innovation, a Pittsburgh-based company building self-driving systems, Axios reported.
Aurora’s automated trucks have traversed more than 400,000 miles on Texas roads, transporting goods between Dallas, Houston, and El Paso as part of its pilot program.
By the end of the year, Aurora said it plans to double the amount of self-driving trips in Texas from around 50 per week to about 100 per week. To help ensure no accidents occur on public roads, Aurora will include backup safety drivers on all freight trucks until the company’s self-driving technology is ready to launch in late 2024.
“For me, this is the future … to be a part of what I would consider to be fundamental change, and making the roads safer and making our economy run at a more efficient pace and speed. It just felt like too important of a story not to be part of,” Fisher told The Dallas Morning News in July.
Kodiak Robotics relocated to North Texas from California in 2019.
“There’s things on the logical side that facilitate and make it easier for us to start testing and applying this technology, such as weather, the quality of the roads themselves, how hilly it is, and so forth,” said company co-founder Paz Eshel, speaking with Dallas Innovates. “But there are also other important aspects. Is there enough freight volume in a given geography? Is the regulatory structure that’s in place supportive of such technologies? So, we ended up choosing Texas, and particularly, Dallas.”
Autonomous “middle-mile” trucking company Gatik has also made a name for itself in the Dallas area. In May, the autonomous box truck company partnered with Kroger to make daily runs between the grocery chain’s customer fulfillment center in Dallas and three area stores.
“Texas and specifically Dallas-Fort Worth has been a big market, a big focus of ours over the last two, three years,” said Gatik co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang, Forbes reports.
According to Gatik, self-driving “Class 3-7” trucks will radically transform the future of transportation and help address supply chain issues and driver shortages.
“This is the present, not the future. It’s happening now,” said Richard Steiner, head of policy and communications for self-driving truck firm Gatik. “Over the next few years, you’re definitely going to see autonomous trucks become increasingly commonplace across multiple markets,” he said, per Investor’s Business Daily.
Despite Dallas becoming a leader in the autonomous trucking industry, some critics of self-driving technology have raised concerns regarding potential crashes and the number of workers that will lose their jobs as the trucking sector further embraces automation.
With wages and benefits accounting for around 40% of total operating expenses and federal law limiting truck drivers to an 11-hour work shift, Jefferies analyst Stephen Volkmann said he believes operators of large fleets will see enormous benefits from the launch of autonomous trucking.
“This will be a game-changer in logistics,” Volkmann said, according to Investor’s Business Daily.