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Dive Brief:
- Food and beverage distributor Martin Brower and autonomous truck technology company Kodiak Robotics are delivering cargo autonomously with a safety driver eight times a week from Roanoke, Texas, to Oklahoma City, according to a press release.
- The deliveries are of time-critical loads of refrigerators for restaurants, ongoing runs that started in July 2022 and have already been completed over 600. After the route of autonomous vehicles, local drivers they distribute the products to many restaurants.
- “Your next order of fries may have traveled in a Kodiak truck,” said CEO and founder Don Burnette. The company cited Martin Brower’s partnerships with major restaurant brands, which include McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A, but declined to say whether those third-party clients are involved.
Dive Insight:
Kodiak’s development in refrigerated freight makes the case that autonomous trucks can provide safe, reliable, on-time deliveries, said Michael Wiesinger, Kodiak’s vice president of freight and transportation.
“If you don’t deliver reliably, or if we don’t deliver on time on refrigerated or other perishable goods, that naturally creates spoilage and so on,” he said, noting how the company demonstrates AV capabilities from dry truck to potato chip.
Deliveries in July 2022 marked the first passenger deliveries for the Kodiak, followed by another inspector case the following year with CR England and Tyson Foods, Wiesinger said.
Martin Brower also joined Kodiak’s Partner Development Program, which includes companies that sign an agreement and receive 360 degree view of a carrier’s operations as well as assessing which lanes can be served by autonomous trucks.
Kodiak is looking for partners who have the vision and focus to achieve autonomy. “We really want to have the right companies that we work with,” Wiesinger said. “This is very important to us.”
Kodiak plans to start making its vehicles truly autonomous by the end of this year.