On Tuesday, A.P. Moller-Maersk and Kodiak Robotics announced they had launched the first commercial autonomous trucking lane between Houston and Oklahoma City.
The companies said they would be autonomously hauling consumer goods 24-hours per day, four days per week. The launch marks an expansion of the two companies’ collaborations. In November the companies began autonomous freight deliveries as part of Maersk’s Global Innovation Center Program and in August, Kodiak started delivering eight load per week, with a safety driver behind the wheel, for Maersk’s customers.
“Kodiak and Maersk are completing four round trips per week on a 24-hour-a-day, four-day-a-week basis between a Houston facility, where consumer products are loaded onto 53-foot trailers, to a distribution center in Oklahoma City,” Erez Agmoni, Maersk’s global head of innovation said. “Operational learnings gained from the activity are captured and documented as part of the Kodiak Partner Deployment Program, which is designed to help companies learn how Kodiak’s self-driving trucks can become an integral part of their overall logistics strategy and offerings.”
The partnership allows Maersk to stay at the forefront of autonomous trucking solutions, a technology the company believes will play an instrumental role in digitizing the supply chain.
“Since our founding, we have focused on developing an autonomous product that is easy for global innovation leaders to integrate into their networks, and Maersk is a perfect fit,” Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said. “Hauling commercial freight gives us the opportunity to work together to integrate Kodiak’s autonomous trucking solution into Maersk’s operations. As the first autonomous trucking company to establish this new commercial lane between Houston and Oklahoma City, we are demonstrating our teams ability to introduce new lanes and bring new efficiencies to the entire logistics industry.”