PepsiCo’s Doritos Are Now Riding in Driverless Trucks

When you grab a bag of Doritos off the shelf in Texas, Arizona, or Arkansas, there’s a growing chance it arrived without a human behind the wheel.PepsiCo has quietly become one of the most aggressive adopters of autonomous trucking in the U.S., deploying 41 driverless box trucks (total fleet size) operated by autonomous startup Gatik to move Frito‑Lay snacks across three states. From pilot to daily operationsGatik sits in the “middle‑mile” of logistics: the unglamorous runs between plants, warehouses, and big retail locations. Instead of 80,000‑pound Class 8 semis, Gatik uses 26‑ and 30‑foot medium‑duty box trucks running fixed, repeatable routes — the kind of lanes that are boring for humans and ideal for automation.According to the company, its freight‑only, fully driverless trucks (no safety driver or in‑cab operator) have now completed around 60,000 driverless orders without incident since mid‑2025. Gatik says those operations support Fortune 50 retailers and large consumer brands across markets including Dallas–Fort Worth, the Phoenix metro area, and Northwest Arkansas.PepsiCo’s deployment plugs directly into this network. In Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas, Gatik‑equipped Frito‑Lay trucks are hauling Doritos and other snacks between PepsiCo facilities and retailer distribution points on a fully commercial basis. It is one of the clearest examples yet of autonomous trucking crossing the line from pilot project to everyday infrastructure.Why PepsiCo is leaning inPepsiCo has been experimenting with cleaner and smarter freight for more than a decade, from early electric delivery trucks to today’s EV and automation partnerships. On the electrification side, it works with companies like Einride to deploy battery‑electric trucks in Tennessee that are projected to handle over 2,500 loads and nearly 200,000 miles annually, cutting about 143 metric tons of CO₂e each year. Those Memphis‑area routes are still human‑driven, but they show how electrification and autonomy are being layered together in the same logistics strategy.Autonomous trucking, meanwhile, speaks directly to two structural problems: labor and reliability. Middle‑mile driving is repetitive, hard to staff, and sensitive to delays. By locking in fixed routes and letting software handle the steering, Gatik promises a freight service that can run close to 24/7 with consistent performance. For a company like PepsiCo, shaving uncertainty and idle time out of regional snack distribution adds up quickly in both cost and service‑level terms.It’s telling that Gatik’s business model is “transportation as a service”: big shippers don’t buy the trucks or the autonomy stack; they sign multi‑year contracts for a guaranteed number of driverless vehicles and route‑miles. That’s how Gatik says it has built a $600 million contracted‑revenue book of business, with plans to expand from dozens of driverless trucks to hundreds over the next few years.The broader driverless freight mapPepsiCo and Gatik are not alone. Across the southern U.S., Aurora is stitching together a network of long‑haul autonomous freight corridors, including a roughly 1,000‑mile Phoenix–Fort Worth lane that exceeds what a single human driver can legally cover under Hours‑of‑Service rules. Aurora reports more than 250,000 driverless miles with no collisions attributed to its Aurora Driver system across ten commercial routes, and expects to have over 200 driverless trucks operating by the end of 2026.Additional Reading for Inquisitive Minds:Wall Street Journal. Driverless Trucks Are Here—and They’re Delivering Bags of Doritos. June 8, 2026. #robotics #autonomoustrucks #roboticnews #dailyroboticnews #droidsnewsletter This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit droids.substack.com