Grocery store giant Kroger has signed up to use autonomous trucks from privately held Gatik to move products from a distribution center in Dallas to multiple retail locations in the region.
Kroger joins Walmart, Loblaw and Georgia-Pacific in using Gatik's self-driving trucks for short-haul routes.
Gatik announced Wednesday that Kroger has signed a multiyear agreement to use Gatik's autonomous box trucks to transport ambient, refrigerated and frozen foods and general merchandise from a Kroger fulfillment center in Dallas to area retail stores.
The Gatik deliveries for Kroger will begin in the second quarter. Further, the Gatik trucks will make repeated delivery runs multiple times a day, seven days a week for Kroger. The routes include semi-urban and highway driving at up to 70 miles per hour. The routes average 60 miles per round trip.
Initially the trucks will have human safety drivers onboard before transitioning to fully self-driving operations.
Autonomous Trucks Still In Infancy
"We're deeply familiar with operating our autonomous fleet within the Dallas ecosystem, and we're very excited to bring that experience to support Kroger in its mission to reshape the future of goods delivery," Gatik Chief Executive Gautam Narang said in a news release.
Kroger stock climbed 2.4% to close at 48.29 on the stock market today.
Gatik provides autonomous transportation as a service daily for customers in multiple markets in Texas, Arkansas and Ontario, Canada. It currently operates 45 trucks across all markets, including more than 25 in Texas.
Meanwhile, major truck fleet operators are testing autonomous trucks for long-haul transportation. But public companies creating technology for long-haul self-driving trucks have struggled as that market has been slow to develop.
On March 3, one such tech company, Embark Technology, announced that it was laying off 70% of its workforce, or 230 employees. It is winding down its operations as it explores a restructuring, sale or liquidation.
Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
