Tech & AI Oct 15, 2026 · 7 min read

Autonomous trucks reach Texas forwarders through their usual carriers

Robot trucks are arriving in Texas through carriers you already use. Warrior Logistics, a Texas carrier with more than 200 trucks, now runs Waabi autonomous trucks on Dallas–Houston freight, FreightWaves reported on 14 October. Our view: autonomous capacity will reach forwarders through existing carriers, not new contracts. Waabi says routes have had 100% on-time pickup and delivery. Neither firm disclosed a truck count. On 7 October, FMCSA, the US truck safety regulator, granted a five-year exemption letting driverless trucks use cab beacons instead of roadside triangles. Ask your Texas carriers which loads run autonomously. Our prediction: at least one more Texas carrier signs a similar deal by end of Q1 2027.

Texas carriers are starting to resell robot-truck capacity. Forwarders will get it before they ask for it
Warrior Logistics is now hauling recurring customer freight between Dallas and Houston on Waabi autonomous trucks. FreightWaves reported the deal on Wednesday 14 October.
Warrior is an asset-based carrier, meaning it owns and runs its own trucks. It was founded in 2015, is based in Coppell, Texas, and runs more than 200 trucks. The freight is food and beverage, consumer goods and other shipments. Over the coming year, the two companies will choose new lanes across Warrior’s network, FreightWaves reported.
Our view: this is the template for how autonomous trucking reaches forwarders. The tech company does not sell to the shipper. It plugs into a carrier the shipper already uses. That means many forwarders buying Texas truckload will have freight on an autonomous truck before they have signed anything that says so.
We also think the hard numbers are still too thin to plan around. The deals are real. The capacity behind them is mostly undisclosed.

What was announced, and what was not

Waabi says routes run since commercial operations began earlier this year have had 100% on-time pickup and delivery and zero safety incidents, according to FreightWaves.
It also says commercial load volume on its Dallas–Houston route has grown more than 80% this year, FreightWaves reported. No baseline was given. If the starting number was small, 80% growth is still small.
Neither company disclosed how many Waabi trucks Warrior runs or how many loads have moved, FreightWaves reported.
Warrior’s CEO, Scott McFarlane, explained the reasoning. “Our customers want more capacity on our core lanes, and they want it to be consistent,” he said, FreightWaves reported. He added: “Waabi Driver-powered trucks complement our professional drivers, build density on our power lanes,” and that they “add capacity on the routes that are less desirable for our drivers.”
“Power lanes” are a carrier’s busiest, most profitable routes. Building “density” means running more loads on them, so trucks spend less time empty.
Waabi COO Lior Ron said: “Warrior has helped shape our technology over the course of our partnership”.
These are not driverless trucks yet. The Volvo trucks running Waabi’s software for Warp carry “an observer in the driver’s seat,” FreightWaves reported. Waabi said this month that it is “fully on track for driverless next year, with Volvo as the first OEM platform.” An OEM (original equipment manufacturer) is the truck maker, here Volvo.

Two Waabi customer deals in nine days

The Warrior deal came nine days after Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions started hauling for Warp, according to FreightWaves.
Volvo announced the Warp operation on 5 October. Volvo VNL Autonomous trucks, driven by Waabi’s software, haul freight to third-party facilities along the Dallas–Houston corridor, Volvo said. Warp runs LTL (less-than-truckload, where several shippers share one trailer) and full-truckload services. Its customers include Walmart, DoorDash and Gopuff, according to Volvo.
Warp’s CEO, Daniel Sokolovsky, said in the Volvo release: “The value of autonomy grows when you can coordinate the freight around it.”
Volvo’s release also confirms: “Currently autonomous hauls are run with an observer in the driver’s seat.” It gave no date for driverless runs, saying only that scaling would come “in the coming years.”
Waabi is not new to this road. Its first revenue loads on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston moved in September 2023, FreightWaves reported.
Nor is it alone. Aurora said on 1 May 2025 that it had begun what it called the first commercial self-driving service with heavy-duty trucks on public roads, between Dallas and Houston, according to its Business Wire release. At launch, the Aurora Driver had run over 1,200 miles with no one in the cab. Its launch customers were Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines.
And Houston-based Bot Auto moves about 350 loads a month in Texas, FreightWaves reported on 13 October. In April it ran a 231-mile overnight load from Houston to Hutchins with no safety driver, remote operator or in-cab observer. It had 12 tractors at the time.
In our view, I-45 has become the main proving ground for self-driving freight in the US, judging by how many operators now run on it.

The rulebook just cleared a path

The second piece is regulatory. On 7 October, FMCSA, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, gave Aurora and other Level 4 autonomous truck operators a five-year exemption, Transport Topics reported on 15 October. Level 4 means the truck drives itself with no human needed, within set conditions such as a mapped route.
The exemption lets these trucks use warning beacons mounted on the cab instead of the reflective triangles drivers must place on the road after a breakdown. It runs from 7 October 2026 to 7 October 2031. FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs announced it at an industry summit in Austin. A Federal Register notice followed on 9 October.
In that notice, FMCSA said it “determined that granting the exemption would likely achieve a level of safety equivalent to or greater” than the current rule, Transport Topics reported.
Why it matters: if the rules say someone must walk out and place triangles, someone must be on board. Aurora first asked for this change in January 2023. FMCSA said no. Aurora appealed, ran on three-month waivers, and refiled in April, according to Transport Topics.
Aurora’s Gerardo Interiano said: “High-visibility, cab-mounted warning beacons are a critical, 21st-century solution”. Mark Hill, CEO of PCS Software, said, according to Transport Topics: “I think it’s a historical step for FMCSA to take the step and finally officially remove the last blocker”.
Congress may go further. The draft BUILD America 250 Act, released in May, includes a “Safe Integration of Autonomous Commercial Motor Vehicles” framework. It would set a performance-based safety standard for self-driving trucks, Transport Topics reported. It is a draft, not law.

The cost per truck is falling

The third piece is hardware cost. Bot Auto says its full autonomy kit, computer plus sensors, will cost about $50,000 per truck, FreightWaves reported on 13 October. It will use Lenovo’s AD1 computer, built on Nvidia chips, in trucks starting in Q1 2027.
Bot Auto says that is three to eight times less than other systems. It bases this on a Heavy Duty Journal guide that puts a complete autonomous truck at $350,000 to $600,000. Bot Auto says that implies $150,000 to $400,000 for the autonomy system alone. These are the company’s own numbers, not independent ones.
Bot Auto’s CEO, Xiaodi Hou, said: “We made a deliberate choice not to scale our fleet until the compute platform itself is scalable”.
Hardware cost per truck is a big driver of what an autonomous mile will eventually cost. If $50,000 holds, the gap between a robot truck and a human-driven one narrows fast. We would treat it as a target until someone buys at that price.
Scale targets are large but still future. Aurora expects more than 1,000 trucks on the road and about $200 million in revenue by the end of 2027, with positive gross profit, Transport Topics reported. It has posted losses of $200 million or more in recent quarters. Volvo Autonomous Solutions, Waabi, PlusAI and Torc are also expected to reach commercial scale in 2027, Transport Topics reported.

What this means for forwarders and shippers

Our read for anyone buying freight in Texas:

You may already be on an autonomous truck. If you book Dallas–Houston truckload with an asset carrier, ask whether any of your loads move on autonomous trucks. Ask how they pick which loads.

Liability and claims need a clear answer. Ask who carries cargo liability on an autonomous leg, and whether your contract or insurer treats it any differently.

Delivery windows may tighten. Waabi claims 100% on-time pickup and delivery. Hold carriers to that in your appointment scheduling, and track it yourself.

Rates will not drop overnight. The trucks are not yet driverless, so the labour cost has not gone. Price cuts come only when the cab is empty. We expect carriers to keep the margin first.

The lane map starts on I-45. Watch Dallas–Houston first, then the Sun Belt routes these firms name next. In May 2025, Aurora said it planned to reach El Paso and Phoenix. Warrior and Waabi say new lanes come within a year.

Ask for numbers. Truck counts and load counts are not being published. If a carrier sells you autonomous capacity, ask how many trucks back it.

For forwarders with drayage (short port or rail-ramp moves) in Houston, the real change comes later. Autonomous linehaul (long distance between hubs) needs human-driven trucks at each end. Expect more handoff yards near the highway, and more loads split into first mile, robot middle and last mile.

Our call

We expect at least one more Texas asset-based carrier to announce an autonomous capacity deal with Waabi, Aurora, Bot Auto or another developer by end of Q1 2027.
We also expect no operator on I-45 to publish a per-mile autonomous rate, or a full truck count for a single carrier partner, before mid-2027. Until the observer leaves the driver’s seat, these trucks add capacity, not savings. That is our view.

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