• Kodiak Robotics, an autonomous truck manufacturer, has successfully completed a pilot to test one of Kodiak’s autonomous trucks in a 780-mile route between Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, in partnership with trucking company U.S. Xpress. This also marks the first autonomous freight delivery between the two cities and Kodiak’s service expansion to the East Coast.

• During the nonstop 131-hour pilot, a Kodiak truck and pre-loaded U.S. Xpress trailer traveled a total of 6,350 miles delivering eight commercial loads in four round trips. The truck was accompanied by a safety driver.

• The pilot was done in order to assess the operational capabilities of autonomous trucking under real-world conditions. The results have shown a 100+% increase in utilization compared to traditional trucks with drivers with 11 hours of service limit.

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: The news comes just one month after Kodiak Robotics announced adding Ceva Logistics as a commercial partner for cargo hauling across Texas and Oklahoma. Furthermore, U.S. Xpress has also been showing increasing interest in autonomous trucking in the recent past. In fact, it partnered with peer autonomous truck maker Aurora Innovation for a data sharing and tech deployment program this February and is also working with peer startup TuSimple as a customer, investor, and advisor. </ul>