Another first for autonomous trucks, and this time they are coming after truckers in fracking operations.
San Antonio-based Detmar Logistics, a company specializing in frac sand last-mile logistics, has reached a commercial agreement with Aurora Innovation to autonomously transport proppants – the material used to keep fracking fractures open – 24/7.
Last December, one of Aurora’s competitors, Kodiak AI, began driverless operations in the Permian Basin with frac sand company Atlas Energy Solution. By June, more than 800 loads were delivered over 1,600 hours of driverless service that was capable of 24/7 operations. However, all of those hours and miles were spent on private roads.
Aurora’s partnership will be the first operation using autonomous trucks to haul frac sand on public roads and highways in the Permian Basin, which has a higher fatal-crash rate than the rest of the state.
The planned route will include Interstate 20 as well as local and private roads surrounding Detmar’s facility and the mining site.
An Aurora news release said the company will deliver advanced capabilities, including autonomous navigation of overhead filing silos.
Autonomous operations between the Detmar facility in Midland, Texas and Capital Sand’s mining site in Monahans, Texas, are scheduled to begin in early 2026.
By the second quarter of 2026, Aurora plans to have fully driverless operations in place, with no one in the cab.
Detmar has committed to deploying 30 Aurora autonomous trucks next year, with each hauling sand for more than 20 hours per day. The company plans to expand on that number as “technology is adopted and broadly deployed.”
NHTSA request
On Dec. 11, the final volume of the National Traffic Safety Administration’s research exploring potential technical changes to safety standards was released.
The project examined 81 federal standards to determine how they could be applied to innovative vehicle designs, NHTSA said.
“It’s our mission at NHTSA to design standards that enhance safety and support American innovation,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said. “This research will do just that by helping us better understand how our regulations can create barriers to new technologies that will improve safety on our roadways.”
NHTSA is accepting comments on its findings for 60 days from the date it published the request. LL
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