Between Houston and Oklahoma City, A.P. Moller-Maersk (Maersk) and Kodiak Robotics, Inc., have opened the first commercial autonomous trucking lane.

As part of Maersk’s Global Innovation Center Program, Kodiak and Maersk began making their first autonomous freight deliveries together in November 2022. The creation of the freight lane represents an expansion of this partnership.

Since August, Kodiak has been delivering eight loads each week for Maersk clients while a safety driver is at the wheel.

Erez AgmoniMaersk’s global head of innovation – logistics & services said: “Teaming with Kodiak enables Maersk to stay at the forefront of innovative solutions. Autonomous trucks will play an instrumental role in digitizing the supply chain.

“We expect self-driving trucks to ultimately become a competitive advantage for Maersk as we execute on our strategy to provide customers with a sustainable, end-to-end logistics solution across air, land, and sea.”

Four weekly round trips are made by Kodiak and Maersk, 24 hours a day, four days a week, from a Houston facility where consumer goods are loaded into 53-foot trailers to an Oklahoma City distribution plant.

The Kodiak Partner Deployment Program, which is intended to teach businesses how Kodiak’s self-driving trucks can become an essential component of their overall logistics strategy and offers, captures and documents the operational learnings acquired from the activity.

Don BurnetteFounder and CEO, Kodiak said,“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.

“Hauling commercial freight gives us the opportunity to work together to integrate Kodiak’s autonomous trucking solution into Maersk’s operations.”

Autonomous trucking solutions have the potential to address long-term challenges faced by the trucking industry. According to the American Trucking Association, the trucking industry faces a shortage of roughly 78,000 drivers.

The ATA estimates that, based on current driver demographic trends, as well as projected growth in freight demand, the shortage could swell to more than 160,000 over the next decade.

Each vehicle is equipped with 18 different sensors, including cameras, radar, and lidar, that provide the platform with a 360-degree view around the truck.

Every tenth of a second, the truck evaluates the performance of more than 1,000 safety-critical processes and components in both the self-driving stack and the underlying truck platform.

The trucks learn in parallel, with system upgrades shared to the entire fleet simultaneously, and are not subject to environmental distractions.

Maersk and Kodiak will continue to explore future avenues for collaboration across Maersk’s growing North American logistics network.