A new, high-tech tractor-trailer truck is driving down the highway without someone behind the wheel.
Self-driving company Aurora has started using Aurora Driver to make deliveries between Dallas and Houston, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The two cities are about 230 miles apart.
There is no human driver behind the wheel.
Forbes said the truck that’s on the road has completed 1,200 miles on its regular route between the two major Texas cities.
It is the first autonomous truck that is being used by Aurora, but they hope to have several hauling freight by the end of the year, CNN reported.
There are an additional 30 trucks taking more than 100 loads weekly for Aurora, which is based in Pittsburgh, the newspaper reported.
The company hopes to add El Paso and Phoenix to the list of cities it serves, according to Forbes.
Aurora has partnered with Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines to use Aurora Drive for deliveries, Forbes reported.
The company said the truck has sensing equipment on the top and side of the cab and a high-speed computer that helps track and identify items on the road, The Dallas Morning News reported
It is equipped with LIDAR, which makes a 3D representation of the road; cameras and radar that can see through weather conditions.
It also uses Verifiable AI that uses learning models and other data to make sure highway laws are followed.
The system has a monitoring range of more than four football fields, according to Forbes.
Aurora has done more than 10,000 trips over 3 million miles during the four-year pilot program. autonomous
But some advocates say more oversight is needed for autonomous trucks.
The Teamsters union and Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety said that simulations and limited road testing cannot replicate the real world.
Auroa told The Dallas Morning News that its voluntary safety report released last month is the “most transparent, in-depth information ever provided by an autonomous vehicle developer ahead of driverless operations.”
“We’ve used best practices from other safety-critical industries and our own know-how to set the bar for autonomous vehicle safety,” Aurora’s chief safety officer, Nat Beuse told the newspaper. “That has meant implementing an industry-leading safety management system to prioritize safety within our organization, as well as thorough completion of our safety case to ensure we only deploy driverless trucks when we have the evidence to show they are acceptably safe for public roads.
“Throughout all of this, we’ve put transparency first – working closely with regulators to support a federal AV policy framework, regularly sharing safety metrics and publishing detailed explanations of how our technology works on our website.”
But others said the voluntary report isn’t enough.
“If you have a voluntary safety report, you’re probably not going to put bad things in there when you’re trying to sell technology and make a bunch of profit and money for your shareholders. So it shouldn’t be voluntary, it should be mandatory,” Lewie Pugh, executive vice president of Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, told the Morning News.
© 2025 Cox Media Group
Sign Up
