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Most people who followed the rise of robotaxis probably had a reasonable question at some point: if a car can drive itself across a city, why can’t a truck drive itself down a highway? It turns out someone asked the same question, and the answer is already moving freight across Texas.
FedEx (NYSE: FDX) has been building an autonomous trucking operation since 2021, when it launched a commercial pilot with Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ: AUR) and PACCAR Inc. (NASDAQ: PCAR), using Peterbilt trucks, on a single corridor between Dallas and Houston. The companies have since completed more than 3,200 autonomous loads together. The logic was straightforward: long highway hauls are repetitive and predictable, which is exactly the kind of driving that automation handles well. City driving is chaotic. A Texas interstate is not. Aurora now operates across 10 lanes spanning Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, covering routes between Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso, El Paso and Phoenix, Fort Worth and Phoenix, and Laredo and Dallas.
The safety record so far is hard to argue with. Aurora logged 250,000 driverless miles as of January 2026 with zero Aurora Driver-attributed collisions and a perfect safety record, while all of its commercial truck capacity is fully committed through Q3 2026. The program has not been without complications, though. Aurora briefly achieved fully driverless operations in April 2025 before pulling back. Just weeks after launch, Aurora placed vehicle operators back in the trucks as observers, framing the move not as a safety regression but as a practical adjustment to fine-tune the operational aspects of scaling a commercial driverless trucking business. As of its Q1 2026 shareholder letter, Aurora described itself as on the cusp of launching its second-generation hardware on a new fleet of International LT Series trucks that would enable fully driverless operations without any observer, targeting that launch before the end of Q2 2026. On the manufacturing side, the Volvo Group (STO: VOLV-B) Autonomous Solutions division has begun integrating Aurora’s next-generation hardware into the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck model at its New River Valley factory, an industry first for on-line manufacturing of autonomous trucks.
The economics behind all of this are what make the story worth watching closely. A human truck driver earns an average salary of roughly $57,440 per year, and once benefits are added, annual direct labor savings per autonomous truck are estimated at between $81,250 and $114,750. That is before accounting for utilization. Federal hours-of-service rules limit human drivers to 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window, followed by 10 hours off duty. Autonomous trucks face no such restrictions. The Fort Worth-to-Phoenix corridor covers roughly 1,000 miles with no mandatory rest break required, reducing transit time by a full day compared to a human-driven truck. McKinsey research projects a 42% reduction in per-mile costs through lower driver expenses, fuel savings, and fewer accidents. For FedEx, compounded across thousands of routes, that is a material financial shift. A 2026 report commissioned by Aurora projected $9 billion in annual consumer savings by 2035, $5.7 billion in annual fuel savings, and $9.4 billion in annual safety benefits from reduced crashes and fatalities.
FedEx’s strategy beyond the highway reflects a company placing partnership bets across the full logistics chain: Aurora for highway freight, QuikBot Technologies for urban building deliveries in Singapore, and Berkshire Grey for a fully autonomous trailer unloader called the “Scoop,” which is expected to be operational at FedEx facilities later in 2026. Earlier experiments, including the Roxo sidewalk robot and a partnership with last-mile delivery company Nuro, did not survive, which is a fair reminder that not every bet lands. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson said in Q1 2026 that the company is “hitting a new gear” and on track to put hundreds of driverless trucks on the road this year. The trucks have already proven they can do the job. What comes next is simply a question of how fast the network can scale.
