Michael Wiesinger, COO of Kodiak AI, joins The Fleet Lead to explain how autonomous trucks continue moving into commercial deployments.

Kodiak and one of its partners, Atlas Energy Solutions, already scaled Atlas’s fully autonomous fleet to 35 trucks running 24/7 without a driver in the cab—and the companies plan to scale that fleet to 100 trucks in 2027.

Here is Michael's breakdown on customer-owned autonomous fleets; Kodiak's integration with upfitter Roush; the company’s expansions across industry, military, and over-the-road hauls; and insights into how autonomous tech is changing fleet economics.

Here's the interview transcript as an edited Q&A:

To set the groundwork for anyone who's never heard of Kodiak, what does the company do?

Michael Wiesinger, COO of Kodiak AI: Kodiak AI is one of the leading autonomous trucking developers, meaning we develop technology that allows a truck to drive itself. We do that in three different segments: long haul and automotive trucking, the industrial segment, defense, and public sector.

Kodiak said it's expanding its partnership with a company  named Atlas Energy. What's going on there?

Wiesinger: We have worked with Atlas Energy Solutions for quite a long time.

Basically, in December 2024, we deployed the first fully driverless trucks to Atlas Energy Solutions. Now, one thing that's very special there: This is the first publicly known commercial deployment where the fleet operator owns and operates those trucks.

So it's really Atlas: They own the trucks, they launch them, and they dispatch them. They do all of the things that are required to make those trucks be useful. Since December 2024, we've scaled this deployment; now we have a total of 35 trucks running 24/7 without a driver, without any human in the cab.

Along that, we have expanded the whole deployment: the scale of it, the tons of sand we are hauling, and the amount of routes we are hauling.

We also went from deploying out of one depot (or you can call it a load-out facility) into two. We now operate two distinct deployments for Atlas Energy Solutions. Those two load-out facilities are roughly a 90-minute drive away from each other. One of them is in New Mexico, and one of them is in Texas.

Both of those haul sand from what's called the Dune Express to the outside. The Dune Express is a 42-mile conveyor belt that Atlas built to bring sand from sand mines into the Permian Basin, one of the most prolific basins in the U.S.

From there, we now have two load-out facilities where, from the conveyor belt, sand is dumped into silos and then into trucks.

It seems like Atlas Energy is very interested in cutting-edge technology.

Exactly. That is one of the reasons why we partnered with Atlas: because when we got to know their team, we understood they really care about innovation, they're really tech-forward, and they're willing to figure out what the world's first deployment of fully driverless trucks into a customer suite actually looks like.

Because it's not just about technology anymore. It's really about how those trucks fit into their daily operations. Their daily operations are, of course, much larger than the driverless trucking fleet that they have running the Kodiak driver. And so you need to make sure it works with their transport management system, with their fleet management systems. You need to make sure that they have the ability to efficiently and effectively utilize, launch, and dispatch those trucks.

Just to run through some numbers: For example, just in Q2, we hauled 300,000 tons of sand for them—adding to what we had up to Q1 so far, which was 450,000 tons of sand.

An additional number that is really meaningful is up until Q2, we have actually operated a total of 40,000 driverless hours for Atlas Energy Solutions.

It's real. This is not a pilot. This is not a prototype anymore. It's a real deployment, doing real work that Atlas, as the customer, needs every single day.

Is the expanded fleet going to be primarily Peterbilts, like the milestone deployment had?

The 35 trucks that I just mentioned were all Peterbilt. Atlas has decided to move to a second OEM, which we will announce shortly.

We use Roush as an upfitter, or a contract manufacturer, that installs all the things—the computer, the sensors on those trucks. They have built a full manufacturing line for doing that.

Then the trucks come back to us for final commissioning and validation. And then we hand them over to Atlas, and they go into their daily operations.

Is Atlas taking some of these trucks on public roads in 2027 as well?

Yeah. If you think about the Permian Basin in general, it's a combination of private roads, county roads, and Department of Transportation roads. Some of them are paved. Some of them are clay. It's quite a complex environment.

Atlas has the idea to take those trucks everywhere. They don't want to just say, "OK, these four roads." In fact, at this point, by the end of Q2, we have operated on over 20 routes, fully driverless.

So you can imagine how much further they want to scale and go throughout the entire Permian eventually.

What other partnerships/deployments does Kodiak have running right now?

Atlas is our first customer in the industrial segment that I described in the very beginning. In addition, we are in Q3 launching a pilot for West Fraser. West Fraser is one of the largest wood product companies, and they operate primarily in Alberta, Canada.

We are very excited to show how the system that we have built also transfers to additional environments.

In addition, we work for the Department of Defense. We partner with companies like GDLS, and we have some other projects and programs. One of them that we have announced early this year for the Marine Corps is on the ROGUE-Fires vehicle, which is a purpose-built, fully unmanned vehicle for the Marine Corps. And we have just been selected for phase two of what is called ROADS, which is a program from the Defense Innovation Unit to bring autonomous driving to sustainment and basic operations.

And, of course, our over the road: Our over the road is our longest-standing business. We have been working with partners like J.B. Hunt, Werner Enterprises, Martin Bower, and Roehl Transport.

Ikea is one of the best-known shippers out there. We have worked on a long-standing relationship with them and have been hauling freight.

In total, we have actually operated over 20,000 customer loads. I think we are thriving across all three sectors and constantly growing all of those because there's such a huge demand for autonomous driving technology.

We all know the benefits: making transportation safer, making roadways safer but also more efficient, effective—all of that. That gets people excited, and I think that's why we see so much momentum.

What do you think the future of autonomous trucks looks like?

I think the future's bright for autonomous technology.

We all know what's going on in the trucking environment: It's always an up and down with what the trucking market in general looks like. But right now, there's tightening supply.

Carriers are looking more for autonomous technology because they can't hold the capacity that they want to hold for their shippers anymore. And so what they do is say, "In the market that we are in, I need to get autonomous trucks and autonomous trucking capacity sooner," and they are pushing for that. So I think the future is bright.

Just think about all the benefits. Safety, we all know, is very obvious: The truck at any given point of time observes a 360-degree environment, never gets drowsy, never gets tired, and doesn't have to sleep. It's very easy to understand that it's safer.

But there are many, many more benefits if you think a little bit beyond just the safety aspect. For example, today, a truck operates roughly 100,000 miles per year. That is mostly because a human has a limitation on how many hours they can drive per day and per week. With an autonomous truck, you can more than double—maybe even close to triple—that amount of miles, making your asset utilization much higher than what it is today.

Or, if you think about out-of-route miles: some of those are induced by human driving behavior. If the driver wants to get home to their family and can’t take the next load, that's a mile that wasn't actually necessarily if you had fully driverless trucks—because at that point nobody will actually need to go home.

I can spin that a little bit further: Think about fuel efficiency, think about being able to drive extremely consistently, not aggressively, and non-emotional. I think it's easy to conceive that there's quite a fuel savings coming from autonomous trucks as well.

The way we look at this and the way we talk about this with our customers and current fleet partners is: Think about total cost of ownership from a bottom-line as well as top-line perspective. It will be massively decreased from a cost perspective and increased from a profit perspective. So it's a very exciting business opportunity for all of our partners.

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