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Deep in the heart of Texas, you might be a little alarmed to find a big ol’ box truck roaming the road with nobody at the wheel. That’s not quite about to happen, but Gatik, an autonomous-vehicle startup, is planning to put some self-driving prototype trucks on the road in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this summer, delivering toilet paper and Dixie cups to Sam’s Club stores throughout the region — thankfully, with a human back-up driver in the cab.
Gatik , founded in 2017, focuses its autonomous research on what they call the “middle mile” of transporting goods — for example, hauling inventory from distribution centers and warehouses to retail stores. Middle-mile trips are typically short, requiring trucks smaller than the Class 8 tractor-trailers you see hauling goods across the country (mostly to those distribution centers).
As Gatik sees it, autonomous middle-mile trucks can help retailers fulfill orders more quickly, especially in the current market, where there’s a shortage of professional truck drivers squeezing our nation’s logistics .
Gatik has already been working on autonomous trucking deliveries with Sam’s Club parent company Walmart , delivering online orders from distribution centers to local stores in Bentonville, Arkansas. The autonomous trucks there graduated to operating without safety drivers in the summer of 2021, running a 7-mile loop with pre-determined stops 12 hours a day. A similar parnership with Walmart is being tested in New Orleans.
In an interview with TechCrunch , Gatik’s co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang explains that the Dallas-Forth Worth partnership with Sam’s Club will help to further test the company’s autonomous vehicles, in the hope that the technology can be implemented across the country.
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As part of the multi-year deal, delivery trucks are expected to travel upwards of 300 miles a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to 34 Sam’s Clubs in the Dallas-Forth Worth area. Gatik expects those vehicles to take to the roads sometime next month.
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