This week in trucking: Werner acquired FirstFleet, autonomous milestones

These are the week's trucking industry headlines:

Listen to the news on this week's episode of The Fleet Lead podcast here or search for The Fleet Lead on your favorite podcast app.

Summaries of the stories are below:

Werner acquired FirstFleet

Werner Enterprises, the 11th largest for-hire carrier in the U.S. according to the FleetOwner 500, paid $245 million to acquire First Enterprises, the parent company of FirstFleet. FirstFleet is No. 46 on the FleetOwner 500.  The combined company would operate more than 7,300 trucks.

Gatik hit medium-duty autonomous milestone

Gatik announced that, since the company launched autonomous freight hauls in mid-2025, its autonomous driver has completed 60,000 fully driverless orders without incident. The company secured $600 million in contracted revenue for Fortune 50 retailers. The Gatik Driver was deployed on medium-duty Isuzu trucks running mostly regional operations.

Traton and PlusAI entered a $25 million autonomous truck partnership

The Traton Group committed up to $25 million for PlusAI to develop its autonomous trucks. The announcement is an expansion of the companies’ existing partnership: Traton in 2024 selected PlusAi’s virtual driver for its Scania, MAN, and International vehicles. With the new $25 million partnership, Traton will place a representative on the PlusAI Board of Drivers, as Plus plans to go public in February.

Diesel deleting will no longer risk jail time

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will no longer pursue criminal charges against technicians who engage in illegal emissions system tampering. Tampering can still incur civil penalties, however.

FMCSA issued hours-of-service exemptions across 40 states

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released temporary HOS relief under Regional Emergency Declarations for most of the country. The waivers are exclusively for operations that support emergency relief in the affected states. The waivers started January 23 and could be effective as late as February 6.

Eaton is spinning off its commercial vehicle business

Eaton, a provider of several components in the commercial vehicle market, announced that it is splitting its Mobility Group into an independent, publicly traded company. Eaton expects to complete its spin-off in the first quarter of 2027.

Diesel prices increased 9 cents

The national average on-highway diesel price jumped up to $3.62, according to the Energy Information Administration.