Kodiak AI has signed a binding agreement to deliver 75 self-driving trucks to California freight company DTL Transport starting in 2028. No earlier contract of its kind put driverless big rigs on public highways.
DTL moves fresh produce and grocery goods. It will run the rigs on several interstate routes, starting with runs from Dallas to El Paso and along the I-20 corridor toward Atlanta. Kodiak has already tested both stretches.
The order arrives just before Kodiak’s bigger milestone. Come December the company intends to pull human safety operators out of the cab and start a driverless highway hauling goods for Ikea along the Dallas to Houston stretch of Interstate 45.
Founder and chief executive Don Burnette told TechCrunch that mid-market carriers appeal because they move at startup speed. He called the contract a turning point for the sector and a revenue boost for a company whose shares sit 87% below their opening-day price.
Kodiak bills those accounts today by owning the equipment and driving it itself, with Charger USA, Roehl Transport and Werner Enterprises among the regulars. Atlas Energy Solutions has held a Driver-as-a-Service deal since 2024, running 35 rigs off-road in the remote Permian Basin of West Texas, with up to 100 expected by mid-2027.
The DTL relationship grew from a 225-mile Fresno-to-Los Angeles pilot that hauled perishables behind a safety operator. Kodiak never disclosed the contract’s value, but its 2025 investor deck projects $150,000 to $190,000 in annual recurring revenue per truck. At about 97 cents a mile and 225,000 miles annually, 75 trucks would bring in roughly $11.2 million a year.
Regulators still have to bless driverless operations at highway scale. Aurora Innovation is chasing the same shift, but Kodiak signed an order book before the safety driver came out.
