Tech & AI Oct 10, 2026 · 8 min read

Driverless trucks get a five-year federal green light and new Texas lanes

Driverless trucks get five years of federal cover as Texas lanes reach Laredo. On 7 October the US trucking regulator, FMCSA, gave driverless trucks a five-year exemption to use cab-mounted amber beacons instead of the warning triangles a driver sets out after a stop. It runs to October 2031, according to Automotive World. The next day Kodiak and Charger USA announced hauls on the 435-mile Dallas–Laredo lane, still with a safety driver aboard. Our view: the federal paperwork problem is largely solved. The limit now is trucks and safety sign-off. Our call: a truck with nobody in the cab will haul paying freight into Laredo on a regular schedule by mid-2027.

Driverless trucks get a five-year federal exemption as Texas lanes reach Laredo
On 7 October the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the US trucking regulator, granted driverless trucks a five-year exemption from one of the oldest rules in trucking. When a truck breaks down or stops on the shoulder, the driver must walk out and set reflective warning triangles behind and around it. A truck with nobody in the cab cannot do that. From now until October 2031, it can switch on amber beacons mounted on the cab instead, according to Automotive World.
That same week, two more Texas lanes started carrying customer freight on autonomous trucks. One of them runs to Laredo, which Kodiak calls the highest-volume commercial land port of entry in the United States.
Our view: the federal argument over whether a driverless truck can legally work a US interstate is now mostly over for the next five years. What limits growth now is not Washington. It is how fast developers can build trucks and finish their safety cases, the evidence files they must complete before taking the person out of the cab. For forwarders, that means autonomous capacity will show up first on a handful of Texas lanes, in small volumes, offered terminal to terminal.

What the exemption does

The exemption covers SAE Level 4 trucks. Level 4 means the system drives itself with no human needed, but only within a defined set of roads and conditions, known as its operational design domain. The exemption is open to any Level 4 carrier that notifies FMCSA, not only Aurora, which applied, according to Automotive World.
The conditions are specific, according to Automotive World:

Beacons must be amber and mounted at least 100 inches high.

They must be switched on within five minutes of a stop. Drivers get ten minutes to place triangles.

Trucks must stay inside their validated operating areas.

No hazardous materials, no passengers and no triples (three trailers).

Crashes involving active beacons must be reported within five days, plus annual malfunction reports.

States cannot enforce conflicting rules on the interstate operations it covers.

The exemption replaces four three-month waivers Aurora had operated under since October 2025, according to Automotive World. Kodiak, Waabi and Stack AV also joined. It reverses FMCSA’s December 2024 rejection of a request from Aurora and Waymo. Aurora sued over that rejection in early 2025 and dropped the case once the temporary waiver came through.
Jeff Farrah, chief executive of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, put the industry’s view simply: “Going from a temporary waiver to a five-year exemption gives the industry a lot of confidence,” according to Automotive World.
That is the real change. A three-month waiver is fine for a pilot. It is hard to sign a multi-year freight contract or finance a fleet on it. Five years is long enough to plan around.

The evidence is thinner than the decision

The safety evidence has moved far less than the decision since FMCSA said no in 2024, Automotive World argues. Back then the agency objected that the request covered “a class of unspecified carriers using unspecified equipment on unspecified vehicles”. The 2026 exemption is still open to any Level 4 carrier, but it now comes with height, timing and reporting rules attached. Automotive World places the decision inside a wider federal push to make room for autonomous vehicles, including a separate exemption from road-safety regulator NHTSA letting Zoox deploy up to 5,000 fully autonomous vehicles without manual controls. FMCSA this time cited a 2022 Aurora study’s response distances: drivers reacted to beacons at 135.7 metres and to triangles at 133.24 metres. The new real-world data covers 34 trucks and more than 500,000 miles. But the beacons were active for only about ten hours in total.
FMCSA received 402 public comments, according to Automotive World. Support came from the American Trucking Associations, several state trucking associations and many companies, according to Land Line. Opposition came from truck safety groups, individual truckers and OOIDA, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. Critics worried about jackknifed trailers blocking the lights and electrical faults disabling them.
“This corporate carve-out sets a troubling precedent,” OOIDA president Todd Spencer said, according to Land Line. “We hope this isn’t the start of a new trend at FMCSA.”
There is also a court case. Kostas Giannoulias, who hauls interstate freight by cargo van in Texas and Oklahoma, petitioned the Seventh Circuit appeals court on 8 September to challenge FMCSA’s earlier waivers for Aurora, according to Land Line. The court denied his request for a stay on 5 October. He has filed an emergency motion for reconsideration. We do not expect it to stop operations, but it is the one live legal risk to watch.

Texas lanes, with people still aboard

On 8 October Kodiak AI and cross-border carrier Charger USA announced autonomous hauls of refrigerated and dry freight on the 435-mile lane between Charger’s terminals in Dallas and Laredo, according to Kodiak. The first delivery ran on 8 September. A safety driver is still behind the wheel. The companies plan to go driverless once Kodiak completes its safety case. Kodiak says the Port of Laredo handled over $350 billion in trade in 2025, nearly 40% of US trade with Mexico.
Andy Khera, president of Charger USA, said: “Autonomy lets us build a network that serves both our customers and our drivers,” according to Kodiak.
Laredo is not new ground for driverless plans. In July, Aurora said Charger Logistics, which runs cross-border services between the US and Mexico, would begin driverless hauls between Dallas and Laredo, according to Aurora. Two of the leading developers now point at the same border lane.
On 5 October Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi started their first customer hauls, for freight network Warp on the Dallas–Houston corridor, according to Volvo. Warp runs less-than-truckload (LTL, shared loads from several shippers) and full-truckload services for customers including Walmart, DoorDash and Gopuff. An observer still sits in the driver’s seat. “The value of autonomy grows when you can coordinate the freight around it,” said Warp CEO Daniel Sokolovsky, according to Volvo.
Dallas–Houston is where this started. Aurora began regular driverless deliveries on that lane in May 2025, according to Aurora. Kodiak has named it as its own long-haul driverless launch lane, with IKEA as the launch partner later this year, according to Kodiak.

How fast it scales

The developers’ own numbers show both the ambition and the gap.
Aurora targets 200 driverless trucks by the end of 2026, according to Automotive World. Aurora’s outlook has its fleet growing from about 200 trucks late this year to 1,000 by end-2027, with 2027 revenue of $200 million, according to FleetOwner. CFO David Maday set out more detail at an investor forum. Aurora says trucks for McLane, Werner and other customers average over 225,000 miles a year, more than double a normal truck, according to Aurora.
Kodiak tracks a “readiness measure”, the share of its driverless safety case that is complete. It hit 96% at the end of September, up from 84% in February, according to Kodiak. CEO Don Burnette said: “We are on track to launch driverless long-haul service by the end of 2026.”
Waabi has raised over $1.3 billion, according to Volvo.
Set against the US truck market, 1,000 trucks is small. Even if every target is hit, autonomous trucks will be a thin slice of Texas capacity through 2027.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

Cross-border freight. The Laredo launches run between carrier terminals on the Texas side. Nothing announced so far crosses the border itself, so the crossing and the terminal handoff stay with human drivers. Forwarders handling Mexico freight should expect autonomous offers to cover the Dallas–Laredo leg only, with the crossing handled as today.
Contract, not spot. Driverless capacity is being sold under fixed lane agreements to named carriers and shippers. It will not show up on load boards (online marketplaces for one-off spot loads) soon. Shippers who want it should ask their carriers now which lanes they plan to automate, because allocation for 2026 is already spoken for. Aurora says it is fully allocated to exit the year with 200 trucks, according to Aurora.
What is excluded. No hazmat under the exemption. Any dangerous-goods freight stays with human drivers.
Service. The pitch is utilisation and schedule. A truck that runs nearly around the clock suits time-sensitive LTL linehaul and retail replenishment between fixed terminals, which is exactly where Warp and IKEA are starting.
Risk. The exemption can be reviewed, the Seventh Circuit case is open, and crashes involving beacons must be reported within five days. One bad shoulder crash would bring the debate straight back.

Our call

By the end of June 2027, a truck with nobody in the cab will be hauling paying freight into Laredo on a regular schedule, most likely through Kodiak or Aurora. By then forwarders on the Dallas–Laredo lane will be able to get quotes for autonomous linehaul (the long terminal-to-terminal leg) through their carrier partners. But through 2027 the fleet will be too small to move Texas spot rates.

Sources