Driverless Trucks Are Hitting the Roads
A wave of autonomous trucks is now taking to the streets as the industry accelerates toward automation.
PepsiCo has teamed up with the self-driving vehicle startup Gatik, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, to deploy 35 driverless trucks. This marks a significant milestone, being the first instance of a US company using self-driving trucks on public roadways.
The vehicles, weighing around 26,000 pounds, are equipped with a combination of camera, radar, and lidar technology, developed by Gatik. The startup has generated $600 million in revenue through various multi-year contracts with different firms.
Jim Farrell, PepsiCo’s senior vice president of supply chain, expressed that these operations are genuine and ongoing. “They are running in multiple markets within a live network, as opposed to an experimental test environment,” he stated.
Interestingly, some of PepsiCo’s truck drivers belong to unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has historically opposed advancements in the self-driving car sector. Reports indicate that the Teamsters spent over $2.5 million on lobbying efforts in 2025.
At the moment, neither PepsiCo, Gatik, nor the Teamsters have commented on this development.
Safety has been a longstanding concern within the self-driving vehicle industry. For instance, Waymo recalled over 1,200 autonomous taxis in May 2025 following various incidents, while Tesla recalled more than 360,000 self-driving cars back in February 2023.
Farrell noted that the driverless trucks achieved a 99% on-time performance rate, which takes into account factors like traffic and weather. In comparison, the federal highway administration suggests that shippers typically expect truckers to deliver on time about 95% of the time.
Other industries are also swiftly adopting artificial intelligence to enhance automation. For example, last March, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly discussed plans to raise $100 billion to acquire manufacturing companies and apply AI to improve efficiency through a project called Prometheus.
Projections indicate that big tech companies’ AI investments could reach $5.3 trillion from 2025 to 2030. This follows a September 2025 announcement from the Pew Research Center, which revealed that more than half of Americans feel more apprehensive than excited about AI’s growing presence in their everyday lives.
