DALLAS - Kodiak AI and the cross-border carrier Charger USA said on Thursday that trucks fitted with Kodiak's autonomous driving system are hauling refrigerated and dry freight for consumer packaged goods and food and beverage shippers on a 435-mile lane between Charger's terminals in Dallas and Laredo, Texas, the company's first autonomous service to the busiest commercial land port of entry in the United States.
A safety driver is still behind the wheel. The companies said they intend to move the lane to driverless operations once Kodiak finishes its safety case, which it describes as a structured, evidence-backed argument that the Kodiak Driver is acceptably safe to run in a defined domain.
Kodiak and Charger completed their first delivery on the lane on Sept. 8, according to a joint announcement. The Port of Laredo handled more than $350 billion in international trade in 2025, nearly 40 percent of all United States trade with Mexico, the companies said.
"Autonomy lets us build a network that serves both our customers and our drivers," Andy Khera, president of Charger USA, said in the announcement. "Combining our in-house TMS, managed transportation, and the Kodiak Driver creates a nearly fully automated ecosystem that gives our customers long-term capacity continuity through changing labor markets and freight demand, while bringing our drivers home every night."
Charger is an asset-based carrier with temperature-controlled transport among its core lines. The companies said they expect to extend the collaboration to more of Charger's lanes over time as the carrier puts the Kodiak Driver on its own fleet.
"Charger came to us knowing what they wanted from autonomy and what they need to see before scaling it," Don Burnette, Kodiak's founder and chief executive, said. "The Dallas-Laredo lane extends the Kodiak Driver into a new corridor, and gives both companies the operating foundation we need to scale driverless service."
Kodiak sells the system through a Driver-as-a-Service model, fitting the Kodiak Driver on trucks that customers own and operate. The company has run driverless commercial service in the Permian Basin since December 2024, with customer-owned trucks operating with no one in the cab.
Kodiak plans to launch long-haul driverless service by the end of 2026. Its long-haul Autonomy Readiness Measure, which tracks how much of the safety-case evidence is materially complete, reached 96 percent at the end of September, the company said. Separately, Kodiak has named IKEA Supply as the launch shipper for unsupervised driverless runs on Interstate 45 between Houston and the Dallas area later this year.
