Kodiak AI Will Supply 75 Driverless Trucks to DTL Transport
Kodiak secures its first public-highway truck supply deal
Kodiak AI has signed a binding commercial agreement to deliver 75 self-driving trucks to freight carrier DTL Transport beginning in 2028. The deal is Kodiak’s first binding contract for driverless heavy trucks intended to operate on public highways.
DTL Transport, a California mid-market carrier serving fresh-produce shippers and grocery chains, plans to deploy the vehicles on several interstate routes. Initial corridors are expected to include Dallas to El Paso, Texas, and Interstate 20 between Dallas and Atlanta. Kodiak has already tested and operated on both routes.
The announcement arrives before Kodiak’s planned December start of a driverless highway freight service. The company intends to haul goods for Ikea on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston after removing human safety operators from the cab.
A shift from operating trucks to licensing autonomy
The DTL agreement uses Kodiak’s Driver-as-a-Service, or DaaS, model. Under that approach, the customer owns and operates the trucks, while Kodiak licenses its self-driving technology and charges on a per-mile basis for the contract term.
Kodiak currently serves Charger USA, Roehl Transport and Werner Enterprises through a Trucking-as-a-Service model, in which it owns and operates autonomous trucks as a third-party carrier. It carries freight daily for those customers on three active Texas routes, although founder and chief executive Don Burnette described those operations as still in the pilot stage.
The DTL relationship followed a California pilot completed last month. Kodiak autonomously transported perishable goods for DTL over roughly 225 miles between Fresno and Los Angeles, using Interstate 5 and California State Route 99, with a human safety operator behind the wheel.
Revenue potential remains dependent on deployment assumptions
Kodiak did not disclose the agreement’s value. Its 2025 investor presentation forecast annual recurring revenue of $150,000 to $190,000 per truck, based on assumptions including a licensing charge of about $0.97 per mile and annual mileage of approximately 225,000 miles per truck.
If those projections are achieved across all 75 vehicles, the DTL deployment could represent at least about $11.2 million in annual recurring revenue once deliveries are complete. The company has said it wants to become an asset-light technology supplier rather than run a trucking fleet itself.
Kodiak also has an existing DaaS customer in Atlas Energy Solutions, whose vehicles work off-road in the remote Permian Basin of West Texas. Atlas owns and operates 35 Kodiak-equipped driverless trucks, and Burnette said Kodiak is targeting as many as 100 vehicles in service there by mid-2027.
For carriers, the DTL contract makes fleet integration, route validation and the economics of per-mile technology licensing central considerations when evaluating autonomous truck deployments.