On a busy freight corridor, the 240 miles of I-45 between Dallas and Houston, it was bumper-to-bumper, like usual, when something out-of-the-ordinary happened. A big rig let in several cars from the on-ramp. Another 18-wheeler changed lanes to make space for a truck pulled over on the shoulder.

Neither honked its horn—the baritone blasts anyone who has ever driven a hatchback can’t forget.

They’re driverless trucks: they don’t need to honk and can’t on their own, said Aurora Innovation, a major driverless trucker. The trucks have a perception system that adjusts quickly without having to slam the brakes and sees and avoids potential hazards early. And without a driver, no honking in annoyance.

“It’s our job to continue to operate safely and build trust,” said Chris Urmson, who was the chief technology officer of Google’s self-driving car project that became Waymo and is now CEO of Aurora.

Self-driving cars are on the cusp of moving from novelty to commonplace. Waymo driverless taxis buzz around cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. Next up are the biggest, loudest, most-daunting-to-other-drivers vehicles on the highway: the trucks.

As more goods are trucked across the U.S. every day, moving them is getting more expensive. Businesses complain of an acute driver shortage. Drivers need to stop after 11 hours to rest; driverless trucks don’t, saving both time and fuel. The cost of diesel has risen 62% since late February.

This stretch of Texas, flat, straight and filled with trucks, is the perfect testing spot for dozens of driverless big rigs, some without a human driver and others with one riding along just in case. About half a dozen companies, including Aurora, develop the technology for driverless trucks and team up with truck makers to produce them. Aurora, based in Pittsburgh, expects to have 200 autonomous trucks on highways in Texas and nearby states by year-end, up from around 30 big rigs today.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions said it plans to roll out 300 autonomous trucks with Aurora and Waabi, another autonomous-trucking company, by the end of 2027 that would run in Texas and Oklahoma. Aurora estimates that by 2030, 30,000 autonomous trucks could be on the roads.

“I have never seen a more supportive regulatory environment from the federal government,” said Lior Ron, chief operating officer of Waabi. That includes removing obstacles to the commercial deployment of trucks, he added.

Without a federal safety standard specifically governing autonomous trucks, states are coming up with their own frameworks for the trucks. Around two dozen states, mostly in the southern half of the U.S., now allow autonomous trucks on the road without a human operator under certain conditions.

[video] TRUCK ON HIGHWAY 4:5 Technology companies have promised autonomous big rigs for years but ran into technological, funding and other hurdles. This time, the companies say they have completed hundreds of thousands of miles of testing.

Amazon, Walmart, PepsiCo and IKEA have carried out pilot runs with autonomous trucks in recent years. Some tested smaller box trucks. Others tried the biggest commercial trucks that weigh up to 80,000 pounds when fully loaded. A midsize sedan, by comparison, is roughly 3,500 pounds.

In the Permian Basin in West Texas, several driverless trucks have been pounding the dusty roads transporting frack sand to well sites.

“Its ability to see long distances is better than a human driver,” said Matt Detmar, chief executive of Detmar Logistics, which currently uses two driverless Aurora trucks to transport sand in a 60-mile loop in Midland, Texas. The trucks use lidar to see more clearly in the dark, dust and foggy weather and can react faster or avoid a hazard.

There have been 69 reported fatal crashes linked to an automated-driving system or an advanced driver assistance system from July 2021 to August 2026, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. None of these fatal crashes involved a truck equipped with an automated-driving system, NHTSA says.

On I-45, IKEA plans to use a Kodiak AI driverless truck by the end of the year to ship its furniture 219 miles, part of the delivery route connecting its distribution center in Baytown, Texas, with its Frisco store. Human drivers will cover the first and final-mile portions. IKEA has done test runs in Kodiak’s truck for four years, completing over 1,300 deliveries.

“We see significant potential, particularly for long-haul transport. The logistics industry faces long-term challenges related to driver availability, increasing demand for freight movement and the need for greater efficiency, predictability and resilience,” said IKEA spokesman Oscar Ljunggren.

Trucks often go along repeatable routes, which is more convenient for going driverless. The driverless tractor-trailers rely on several cameras and sensors mounted at the front and sides that include radar and lidar equipment to help determine what’s on the road. Inside the cab or the tractor, there remains a steering wheel and seats.

Today, a typical driverless truck run is best suited for what shippers call the middle-mile, or the stretch from depot to depot. It looks like this: Humans load a trailer and drive it to a depot where they hand it off to a driverless tractor. Without a human, the truck drives from depot to another depot or yard where the trailer is either unloaded or a human driver takes over for docking or driving the final mile. Driverless 18-wheelers can’t back up without a human driver, though the companies say they’re working on adding that feature.

“We believe in the strategy of using it in the middle mile,” said Eric Hildenbrand, chief legal, strategy and administrative officer at McLane, one of the largest distributors to convenience stores and chain restaurants in the country.

McLane has a fleet of 3,700 tractors and 5,900 trailers, and aims to add up to 10 Aurora trucks by year-end. It employs more than 6,000 drivers and wants its employees to be at the final mile when they unload and wheel their freight into restaurants or stores like 7-Eleven.

Current regulations limit long-haul drivers to a maximum of driving for 11 hours within a single 14-hour on-duty window, followed by a mandatory 10-hour break. A truck driver driving from Dallas to Atlanta would have to stop somewhere along the 780-mile journey to rest. Driverless trucks don’t.

They use diesel and have to refuel. The driverless-trucking companies arrange for attendants at a gas station to fill them up.

It cost an average of $2.34 per mile to operate a truck in 2025, and about 44% of that represents driver wages and benefits, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. Fuel made up 21% of the cost in 2025. Autonomous trucks can reduce fuel consumption by 10% because they can calibrate speeds and optimize acceleration, braking and coasting with more precision, the companies say. Goldman Sachs forecasts that autonomous trucking will become cost-competitive with human-operated trucks in 2028 in the U.S.

In tests, many driverless trucks have what the industry calls “a safety driver” riding in the cab who can take over if there are emergencies or glitches. Jorge Baeza, retired as a truck driver and has worked for Kodiak since 2021.

Early on, the braking mechanism was harsh and the trucks sometimes unexpectedly stopped when approaching an overpass. Baeza, who was a Kodiak safety driver, used to ask supervisors, “Can I take over?”“Now, it’s so much smoother,” he says. Now, as Kodiak assisted autonomy operator, he can remotely honk the horn of an autonomous truck on the road, if needed, from the command center. Sounding alarms about driverless trucks are some drivers’ associations.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters in California filed a lawsuit in August against the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles opposing new state regulations that removed a ban on driverless trucks weighing 10,001 pounds or more, and allowed testing and deployment of such vehicles through a permit process.

“The deployment of Self-Driving Trucks, authorized by the regulatory changes, has the potential to eventually wipe out the jobs of more than 200,000 employee semi-truck drivers working across California,” the complaint said.

Peter Finn, who serves as the Teamsters’ vice president at-large, said that truck driving is the most common job for men without a college degree in the country. He added that communities want to see investments in people and middle-class jobs against the broader backdrop of artificial-intelligence growth.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association opposes a new Transportation Department ruling that some autonomous truck companies may use cab-mounted warning beacons instead of placing a reflective triangle on the road when a truck stops on the highway. The DOT had previously denied the exemption request by Aurora and Waymo in December 2024.

“This corporate carve-out sets a troubling precedent,” said Todd Spencer, president and CEO of the OOIDA.

In the Permian Basin in West Texas, on any given day, 500 to 600 trucks are deployed delivering frack sand for Detmar Logistics, which operates 24 hours-a-day, 365 days a year. Drivers typically work three weeks and then take a week off, meaning a truck is only in operation 75% of the time. After factoring rest rules that include hours-of-service limits, typically 11 or 12 hours, the utilization rate of the truck falls to 40%.

Detmar has about 180 drivers on payroll, who each make about $80,000 to $120,000 a year. Detmar said he isn’t planning to reduce his workforce. Instead, with more autonomous trucks in the fleet, he hopes to offer them a more predictable work schedule.

Detmar has been using two Aurora driverless trucks seven days a week, 20 hours a day and expects to add about 30 autonomous trucks from Aurora by the end of the year. [video] TRUCK BACKING UP