Gatik Notches Yet Another Major Customer In Pitney Bowes, With Latest Automated Trucking Deployment In Dallas

Gatik continues to make waves in the autonomous trucking space, today announcing an ambitious deployment of their automated box trucks to support Pitney BowesPBI PR B
freight movement in Dallas, Texas.

Pitney Bowes is a global shipping and mailing company providing technology, logistics, and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500. Under the multi-year commercial partnership announced today, Gatik will integrate its class 6 autonomous box trucks into the Pitney Bowes e-commerce logistics network in the Dallas, Texas market beginning in Q1, 2023.

The deployment will see Gatik’s class 6 fleet establish a continuous, operational loop across the Pitney Bowes e-commerce logistics network in Dallas, making multiple deliveries per day, helping to increase the speed and efficiency with which Pitney Bowes’ e-commerce shipments are moved.

The operations involve transporting Pitney Bowes’ shipments in a dense urban operating environment using Gatik’s vehicles purpose-built for B2B short-haul logistics. Gatik says the deployment “will establish a more responsive and flexible logistics network for Pitney Bowes by delivering excellent service levels and reliability, improving speed of deliveries, and providing end-to-end visibility while lowering transportation costs.”

“Our partnership with Pitney Bowes reinforces the intense demand we are seeing for autonomous trucks that can operate within urban and semi-urban environments,” said Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder, Gatik. “We’re excited to help Pitney Bowes accelerate the transformation of their supply chain by establishing a safe, secure and hyper-responsive autonomous delivery service in the greater-Dallas area.”

During the initial phase of deployment for Pitney Bowes, a safety operator will occupy the autonomous vehicles to monitor performance while Gatik prepares to operate fully driverless, just as they do today for Walmart in Arkansas. The partners note that “data collected from each delivery will be used to improve network design and identify additional opportunities for cost savings and service improvements as Pitney Bowes looks to integrate autonomous vehicles across its national e-commerce logistics network.” Pitney Bowes views Gatik’s autonomous middle mile solution as contributing to future-proofing logistics operations, increasing asset utilization, and shifting to a more direct, high-frequency transportation network.

“Our partnership with Gatik promotes growth and accelerates the modernization and expansion of our network with technology solutions that are redefining ecommerce logistics,” said Stephanie Cannon, SVP, Head of Global Platform and Network, Pitney Bowes. “Gatik’s flexible and responsive logistics network enables us to tailor our Designed Delivery services to provide shippers with unmatched solutions. Pitney Bowes and Gatik’s innovative strategies align to remove cost and complexity from e-commerce logistics to better serve our clients.”

Gatik is one of the leaders in real-deal autonomous deployment, having launched fully driverless operations with WalmartWMT
in August 2021 in their home state of Arkansas, following several years of testing. In May, Georgia-Pacific and KBX were announced as new customers in the Texas market; operations will soon begin in the Dallas metropolitan area. Adding Pitney Bowes to Gatik’s significant list of customers sees the company continuing to densify its commercial presence in the state of Texas, which will no doubt enable significant efficiencies for Gatik.

Perspective

Gatik initially caught my eye with their clever approach to simplifying AV deployment: find customers who have regular freight runs such that the Operational Design Domain is simplified to a single, short-haul route for each deployment. With repeated traversals, data on the limited route can always be hyper-fresh, lowering risk. I expect the partnerships with Pitney Bowes and the recently announced partnership with Georgia Pacific will result in the complexity (and utility) rising while the basic concept remains the same.

Given the new tools that Gatik provides, middle mile logistics are seeing another example of technology-driven creative disruption. The legacy approach for urban freight has been to deploy Class 8 tractor-trailers to load up freight meant for several destinations and travel to each one in turn. This allows the cost of the driver to be amortized across the size of the load. But in today’s distribution world, a full-size trailer can be too big, such that a more nimble approach is sorely needed. Going driverless with smaller loads is key to the new strategy.

Juro Osawa’s June article in The Information spoke of disappointing revenue performance by the over-the-road truck AV players. This is understandable, as most of these companies are still in product development, with minimal revenue generated by pre-product trucks testing with potential freight customers. Also, their driverless ambitions are stymied while waiting for autonomy-ready tractors to emerge from the assembly lines of the truck manufacturers. I see this as at least three years away.

Gatik provides a stark contrast, with product on the road, running real loads, producing significant revenue. Their factory-built Isuzu platforms possess the needed autonomy features and the redundancies required for failsafe operations.

Being such a prime market, I will not be surprised to see competitors unveiling their own versions of middle mile autonomous freight movement. But it is evident that Gatik has a substantial head start.

Disclosure: I am an Advisor to Gatik.