Kodiak Signs First Highway Driverless Truck Deal: 75 Rigs for DTL

Kodiak AI will deliver 75 self-driving trucks to freight company DTL Transport starting in 2028 — the company's first binding commercial deal for driverless big rigs that will run on public highways. The contract, announced Wednesday, lands just before Kodiak's next milestone: pulling human safety operators from the cab in December to begin fully driverless highway service.

That driverless launch will carry goods for Ikea on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston. Kodiak went public in September 2025, and the deal offers a badly needed credibility marker: its shares have fallen 87% from their opening-day price. The company did not disclose the contract's value.

Who is DTL Transport?

DTL is a California mid-market trucking company that hauls fresh produce and goods to grocery chains. It plans to deploy the self-driving trucks across multiple interstate routes, starting with Dallas to El Paso, Texas, and Interstate 20 between Dallas and Atlanta. Kodiak has already conducted testing and operations on both routes.

Kodiak founder and CEO Don Burnette framed the choice of partner as a matter of speed. "One of the things that we love about mid-market carriers (like DTL) is that they are able to move with fast execution speed, much more at the speed of a startup or a small company or a tech company like Kodiak, and that they just want to get stuff done," Burnette told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. "It's easier for them to integrate into their fleet because they're not as large, and we think that this is a real turning point for the self-driving industry in general."

That is a CEO's claim, not an audited result. A mid-market carrier can move fast, but it can also absorb fewer losses if the technology underdelivers.

What changes in Kodiak's business model?

The DTL deal marks a strategic pivot. Today, Kodiak operates under a Trucking-as-a-Service (TaaS) model: it owns and runs the self-driving trucks as a third-party carrier on behalf of customers including Charger USA, Roehl Transport, and Werner Enterprises. It carries freight daily for these companies on three active routes in Texas — though Burnette described those operations as still being in pilot stage.

The endgame is different. Under a Driver-as-a-Service (DaaS) model, customers own and operate the trucks while Kodiak licenses its technology, charging by the mile for the duration of the contract. DTL is Kodiak's first on-highway DaaS customer. The relationship was forged during a pilot program last month in California, in which Kodiak autonomously hauled perishable goods for DTL about 225 miles along Interstate 5 and California State Route 99 between Fresno and Los Angeles — with a human safety operator still behind the wheel.

Burnette was blunt about the sequencing: "You have to prove out the technology first using your own truck, show them that it works, show them that it's safe, show them that it integrates. And then we want to be asset light. We don't want to be in the business of running a trucking company."

The asset-light goal is shared with competitor Aurora Innovation. The pilot-to-license path has produced one earlier customer, but only off-road.

How much money is on the table?

Kodiak did not reveal the deal's value. Its public 2025 investor presentation, however, sketches the economics. The company forecast annual recurring revenue of $150,000 to $190,000 per truck, built on assumptions that include:

• A per-mile licensing fee of about $0.97, in line with current human driver costs per mile
• Annual mileage of roughly 225,000 miles per truck — nearly five times what an average American car drives in a year
• Other undisclosed factors

If those projections hold, the DTL contract could generate at least about $11.2 million in annual recurring revenue once all 75 trucks are delivered. That figure rests on assumptions, not signed pricing, and Kodiak's projections have not yet been tested at highway scale.

Does Kodiak already have driverless customers?

Technically, yes — but not on public roads. Atlas Energy Solutions has been a Driver-as-a-Service customer since 2024, Kodiak's first under a binding commercial contract. Atlas's driverless trucks operate off-road in West Texas' remote Permian Basin, where it currently owns and operates 35 trucks equipped with Kodiak's self-driving system. Burnette said Kodiak is on track to have as many as 100 in service there by mid-2027.

The distinction matters. Off-road hauling in an oilfield is a controlled environment; interstate freight shared with human drivers is not. DTL's 75 trucks, arriving from 2028, will be the first real test of whether Kodiak's per-mile licensing model works on public highways — and whether the December removal of safety operators on I-45 goes as planned.