Driverless semis haul frac sand in Texas, and Atlas owns the trucks

January 2025 — In West Texas, the first customer-owned driverless semis in commercial service are hauling sand to oil wells, according to the companies. Here's what launched, what it cost, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Jan. 24, 2025)

Fleet: two RoboTrucks, delivered to Atlas in December 2024. (Kodiak)
Loads: 100 loads of proppant delivered with no one aboard, the companies say. (Kodiak)
Pricing model: an annual subscription for hardware and software. (TechCrunch)
Support: an 18,000-square-foot Odessa office with 12 Kodiak staff, rising to about 20 by end of March. (Kodiak)
Subscription price and truck costs: not disclosed.

What launched

Atlas took delivery of the trucks in December 2024, and driverless service began on Dec. 18, 2024, the companies said. The trucks run in an off-road environment in the remote Permian Basin, TechCrunch reported, where there are no HD maps to rely on and the landscape keeps changing.

Kodiak and Atlas first announced the partnership in July 2024, after Kodiak's first driverless frac-sand run. Kodiak says it completed a safety case, its own evaluation of the system's readiness, within Atlas's operating area before launch.

The hardware

The trucks use Kodiak's sixth-generation platform, which the release says includes "all the redundant components required for operations without a safety driver." Sensors sit in proprietary SensorPods, pre-calibrated modules that Kodiak says allow "fast and easy repairs." The subscription covers those sensors, which are fitted onto Atlas-owned trucks, TechCrunch reported.

Who does what

"This is the first time, as far as we're aware, that the customer is owning and operating the driverless vehicle, instead of the AV company," Burnette told TechCrunch. Kodiak plugs into Atlas's transportation management system through APIs. "They control the logistics. We're not involved in that," he said. Kodiak keeps the trucks "up" and "healthy" and steps in for maintenance.

That differs from Kodiak's highway pilots, where its own trucks carried freight with human safety drivers aboard, TechCrunch said. Off-road work, Burnette argued, is a faster path to revenue than highway driving. Rivals including Aurora Innovation and Waabi had also run highway pilots with safety drivers, according to TechCrunch. Kodiak still runs highway pilots and plans long-haul service; the Atlas deal is its near-term commercial bet. TechCrunch contrasted the model with robotaxis, where Waymo and, formerly, Cruise owned and operated their own ride-hail services (TechCrunch).

The sand conveyor

The launch coincided with Atlas's first sand deliveries from the Dune Express, a 42-mile electric conveyor from its Kermit, Texas facility to a loadout point in eastern New Mexico. The driverless trucks are meant to carry sand from there to customers. Atlas runs 14 production facilities with 29 million tons of annual capacity, it says. The Dune Express is part of a wider plan to automate Atlas's supply chain, and Atlas expects multiple RoboTruck deployments through 2025.

What the companies said

"Kodiak is the first company to make autonomous trucking a real business," Burnette said in the release. Atlas CEO John Turner said the trucks would help "maintain a fundamentally safe and reliable service at the best price for our customers." Neither gave cost or safety figures, and neither said how the driverless trucks will fit alongside the rest of Atlas's trucking fleet.

What went wrong

Tiny fleet. Two trucks, against a basin TechCrunch puts at 75,000 square miles.
Off-road only. The trucks run off-road, not on public highways.
Company figures. The 100-load count and the safety case are the companies' own, with no outside audit published.
What we don't know yet: the subscription price, per-load costs against human drivers, and any incidents.

Our follow-up question for Atlas

What does a driverless load cost Atlas compared with one hauled by a human driver?

Later developments (added Oct. 2026)

Atlas said on July 31, 2026 that it had 28 driverless trucks on 15 routes as of March 31, 2026, with about 7,000 loads and more than 450,000 tons hauled. It targets 100 trucks by mid-2027 and public roads by early 2027, subject to milestones. Kodiak now trades on Nasdaq as KDK. (Atlas)
On Oct. 20, 2026, Kodiak said Atlas's fleet had reached 35 driverless trucks as of June 30, 2026, with more than 40,000 paid driverless hours, and that one truck ran 64 days straight from June 30 to Sept. 1. Those are company figures. (Kodiak)

Sources

Kodiak and Atlas Energy Solutions, “Kodiak AI Delivers Customer-Owned Autonomous RoboTrucks to Atlas Energy Solutions, Completes 100 Loads of Proppant with First-Ever Driverless Commercial Semi-Truck Service,” Jan. 24, 2025. kodiak.ai
TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, “Kodiak has made its first driverless truck deliveries to customer Atlas Energy,” Jan. 24, 2025. techcrunch.com
Atlas Energy Solutions, “Atlas Energy Solutions Expands AI-Enabled Digital Transformation of Oilfield Logistics with Kodiak-Powered Driverless Trucks,” July 31, 2026. ir.atlas.energy
Kodiak AI, “Kodiak Driver Sets New Uptime Record By Running 64 Consecutive Days on an Unsupervised Driverless Truck,” Oct. 20, 2026. globenewswire.com

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