Driverless trucks have been hauling freight on Texas highways for a little over a year, and the carriers using them are now talking in hundreds rather than handfuls. Charger Logistics and Aurora will begin scaling the carrier's autonomous fleet to 500 trucks, the companies said in a release on Monday. The step moves Charger from an early adopter into one of Aurora's largest customers.
Charger is not new to the Aurora Driver. The carrier signed on earlier this year to run Aurora-powered trucks between Dallas and Laredo, one of its busiest Sun Belt lanes, Aurora said in its second-quarter shareholder letter. Aurora sells the Driver itself as a subscription, with customers owning the vehicles and paying a per-mile fee.
The 500-truck figure matches a target already set by another customer. Hirschbach intends to own and operate 500 trucks under a driver-as-a-service agreement with deliveries starting in 2027. For Aurora, which has so far put only a few dozen trucks on the road without a person in the cab, the commitments outline the demand it must build hardware to meet.
Scale is the central question for a company that has spent heavily for nearly a decade. Aurora, founded in 2017 and based in Pittsburgh, reported revenue of $3 million and a net loss of $816 million for fiscal 2025.