Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi began moving customer freight with autonomous trucks between Dallas and Houston, the companies announced on Monday, October 5, marking the first customer operation under their partnership1. Volvo VNL Autonomous trucks powered by the Waabi Driver are hauling shipments for logistics company Warp directly to third-party facilities along the corridor. An observer currently remains in the driver's seat.
Warp's LTL complexity
Warp operates a freight network handling both less-than-truckload (LTL) and full-truckload shipments. Unlike a dedicated route carrying freight for a single customer, LTL networks combine shipments from multiple customers while coordinating different destinations, schedules, and loads. "Together with Warp and Waabi, we are bringing autonomous freight into customer operations in one of logistics' most demanding segments," said Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. "This shows how quickly our ecosystem can adapt to new customers and more complex operations".
Volvo Autonomous Solutions had previously begun carrying freight for DSV between Aurora Innovation terminals in Dallas and Houston using the Volvo VNL Autonomous integrated with the Aurora Driver, with a safety driver present during the initial phase. The Warp deployment is described as the first milestone on Waabi COO Lior Ron's path to broader freight operations. Volvo and Waabi said experience gathered from the Dallas-Houston operation will be used to prepare for additional routes and broader deployment.
A crowded corridor
The roughly 240-mile Dallas-Houston corridor has attracted multiple competing autonomous-trucking companies using different technology and operating models. Aurora Innovation launched commercial driverless trucking between Dallas and Houston in 2025 and later expanded to nighttime runs along I-45, according to The Dallas Express. Aurora said its autonomous-driving system remained responsible for all driving tasks, though Aurora later returned observers to the front seat of some trucks at Paccar's request. Aurora Innovation plans to scale production to 20 driverless trucks per week in Q4 2026[3].
Kodiak AI selected the same corridor for its first planned fully driverless long-haul highway operation and said in September that it was consistently completing end-to-end freight runs between its Lancaster hub and Houston without human intervention by its autonomous-driving system. Kodiak AI is targeting a driverless launch before the end of 2026. IKEA Supply became Kodiak AI's launch shipper for unsupervised driverless long-haul freight service on Interstate 45 on September 29[1].
PepsiCo and Gatik were operating fully driverless medium-duty trucks as part of a multistate commercial deployment that includes Texas. Bot Auto and Ryan Transportation were preparing humanless freight operations between Houston and the Dallas area.
The Volvo VNL Autonomous was designed with redundant systems covering six safety-critical functions. ANALYSIS The Warp deployment adds a second autonomous-driving stack, the Waabi Driver, to Volvo Autonomous Solutions' commercial freight operations on the same corridor where it already runs with the Aurora Driver, giving the truck maker parallel paths toward scaling driverless hauling.