Kodiak and Atlas Energy Solutions are pushing driverless trucking into a bigger, bolder phase, with a fleet that is set to grow fast and move closer to public roads. The trucks are already hauling sand in the Permian Basin without anyone in the cab, and the next steps point toward larger scale, tougher conditions, and a much wider spotlight.
Atlas is expanding beyond a single depot and now runs Kodiak-powered trucks from two locations in Texas and New Mexico. That setup helps the company cover more well sites across the region and react faster when demand spikes, especially with the support of Atlas’s Dune Express conveyor system, which carries sand closer to the destination before the trucks finish the job.
The numbers behind the rollout are hard to ignore. Atlas said its driverless program had 28 trucks on 15 routes as of March 31, 2026, after logging about 7,000 loads, more than 450,000 tons of sand, and over 23,500 hours of driverless operation in the first quarter alone. On July 20, the fleet hit a single-day record with 176 loads, showing just how quickly the system is being pushed.
There is also a bigger ambition on the table. Atlas and Kodiak want to ramp the fleet up to 100 driverless trucks by mid-2027, and they expect public-road operation to begin in early 2027 if the rollout stays on track. That timeline marks a serious shift from controlled industrial routes to highways that everyday drivers use all the time.
Kodiak founder and CEO Don Burnette said the partnership has become a model for how autonomy can work at commercial scale. The company says the fleet already proves that driverless freight is not just a concept on a slide deck, but a working operation that can move real material, on real schedules, for paying customers.
The trucks are not limited to one kind of rig either. Earlier this year, Kodiak and Atlas introduced a driverless truck pulling three connected trailers, with a combined loaded weight above 135 tons. That kind of load raises the stakes immediately, because the challenge is no longer just moving freight, but doing it safely in a setting where everything can change in a split second.
Kodiak says public-road operations could start with highway driving by the end of 2026, with Atlas following in 2027. The broader autonomous trucking race is already heating up, and one recent truck completed a 230-mile commercial delivery in Texas with nobody in the cab, adding more pressure on the industry to prove this can work beyond a closed-loop test environment.
Safety is the big question hanging over all of it, and Burnette has been blunt about how the system is supposed to behave. He said other motorists should not see anything strange, explaining, “Kodiak-powered trucks already operate autonomously on highways across the southern United States with a safety driver in the cab to oversee the system.The Kodiak Driver is engineered to be a safe and cautious driver and to follow normal driving etiquette, so other motorists should not notice anything unusual.”
The company also points to the harsh reality of the Permian Basin, where trucks can face brutal heat, dust storms, flooding, crosswinds, and fog. Kodiak’s system uses cameras along with radar and lidar, and Burnette said the truck will not stubbornly push through unsafe conditions: “And if conditions aren’t safe, the truck won’t keep driving. It slows down and safely pulls over.”
That approach matters because the truck has to handle more than just weather. Kodiak says its vehicles respond to construction zones, emergency vehicles, and shifting road conditions, while also being ready to stop when visibility drops or the environment turns dangerous. In other words, the system is built to pause when the road stops making sense.
Mechanical trouble brings another layer of concern, especially when nobody is sitting behind the wheel. Burnette said the Kodiak Driver watches the truck and its autonomous system continuously, and if something serious goes wrong, it can perform a fallback maneuver that gets the vehicle out of traffic and into a safe stop, while Kodiak’s command center can provide remote help if needed.
Security is part of the story too, since connected vehicles can become attractive targets. Burnette said, “Cybersecurity is something we take extremely seriously because safety starts long before a truck ever reaches the road.” Kodiak says it uses layered protections, tight access controls, and monitoring for suspicious activity, while keeping the most sensitive safeguards out of public view.
The company also cites an independent safety evaluation from Nauto, where the Kodiak Driver earned a VERA score of 98 out of 100 and tied for the top spot among more than 1,000 commercial fleets. Burnette pointed to that result with pride, saying, “We are proud that an independent evaluation by Nauto, a leader in AI-powered fleet safety technology, gave Kodiak the highest score in a safety study, tying for first place and outperforming 1,000 human-driven fleets.”
What happens next will matter far beyond the oilfield. As the fleet grows and the trucks move onto public highways, the real test will be how they handle the messy stuff that drivers know too well, from bad weather to broken equipment to unpredictable traffic. That is where the promises get weighed against the road, mile after mile, in full public view.
