Aurora, the first-mover in self-driving trucks operating on highways, and McLeod Software, a provider of transportation management solutions, today announced a strategic partnership to create the industry’s first Transportation Management System (TMS) for autonomous trucks. The collaboration lays the foundation for a novel user experience for mutual customers utilizing Aurora’s autonomous trucks, which is expected to help to increase industry adoption of self-driving trucking technology.
The Aurora Driver is a self-driving system designed to operate multiple vehicle types, from freight-hauling trucks to ride-hailing passenger vehicles. Aurora is working with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem, including Continental, FedEx, Hirschbach, NVIDIA, PACCAR, Ryder, Schneider, Toyota, Uber, Uber Freight, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and Werner.
Aurora launched its self-driving Class 8 trucking service in April, becoming the first company to deploy autonomous trucking on public roads in the U.S.
Serving The Road Freight World
Self-driving trucks are designed to move freight safely, more efficiently, and around the clock, enabling carriers to significantly increase asset utilization and revenue.
In fact, according to information presented at Aurora’s 2Q24 report to investors, a typical human driven truck running between Fort Worth, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, can make the one thousand mile journey only three times in a given week, due to hours-of-service regulations on time that the operator can drive. The Aurora Driver during this same interval on the same route can run eight journeys. While the net margin for the human driver is 3%, an Aurora vehicle can achieve a 10% margin during this week.
However, freight customers shouldn’t have to bend over backward to adapt their existing operations to this new mode of freight transport. Self-driving technology must seamlessly integrate into customer’s existing operations and transportation management processes without adding unnecessary complexity or friction. This is where McLeod Software fits in, as an established provider of TMS, with more than 1,200 freight customers.
With an API integration to Aurora’s technology, McLeod’s customers will be able to benefit from enhanced real-time visibility into autonomous operations. The goal is to set a new standard for efficiency and ease-of-adoption for carriers interested in moving goods autonomously.
The integration will enable mutual customers to utilize their McLeod TMS to manage critical processes such as load tender and acceptance of autonomous shipments, dispatch, and load visibility—making it possible for McLeod customers to onboard, manage, and integrate autonomous trucks into their business.
Aurora will also be able to tap into McLeod’s deep roster of customers, which they expect to further accelerate industry adoption of self-driving trucks.
“Our partnership with McLeod marks a key next step in delivering a premium, customer-centric product and service,” said Ossa Fisher, President at Aurora. “By meeting customers where they are within their existing TMS, we’re making it easy for them to tap into the safety and efficiency benefits of autonomous trucks.”
“Integrating Aurora’s autonomous capabilities into our TMS platform provides our customers with a pathway to adopt Autonomous Tractors within their operations,” said Tom McLeod, Founder and CEO of McLeod Software. “This collaboration underscores our dedication to providing cutting-edge technology for our customers, empowering them to optimize their operations and embrace innovation with confidence.”
Beta testing of the autonomy TMS is underway. McLeod plans to offer this AV-enabled TMS feature to its customers next year.
Abstracting Away Complexity
What is different about McLeod’s autonomy-focused TMS as compared to the current TMS used by human-driven fleets? “By design, Aurora’s integration with McLeod is similar to standard TMS integrations. Our goal is to make operating an autonomous truck feel as familiar as possible to managing normal human trucks – and we’re purposely abstracting away complexity and designing the system to operate similar to how standard trucks operate. This will make it easier for fleets to adopt the technology and begin realizing the benefits of self-driving technology quickly. TMS functionality that carriers are used to today, like load tendering, scheduling, dispatching, and billing will be part of the integration,” according to an Aurora spokesperson. “We’re putting a lot of effort into creating a way for carriers to manage a pretty technical asset so that it feels like they’re managing a human-driven asset, so it won’t actually look or feel that different.”
Aurora noted further that “we will work closely with McLeod and our customers to enhance the integration over time and what we can offer customers, like unique data points only AVs can provide. Given our industry lead, we believe this integration represents the industry’s most efficient path for carriers to access and manage autonomous capacity.”
Aiming For A Seamless Fit
Freight is freight: it is an incredibly complex space where every minute and every penny counts. All of the truck autonomy developers understand their offering has to fit into the existing eco-system of manufacturing, selling, and operating Class 8 trucks.
Aurora’s announcement today is an expected part of this process. “Now that we have proved our autonomous technology works (and are validating capabilities like nighttime operations), we are focused on customer adoption. An essential part of adoption is ensuring autonomy can seamlessly fit within customers’ existing operations and transportation management processes without adding unnecessary complexity or friction,” said the spokesperson.
Disclosure: Richard Bishop is an equity holder in a variety of companies in the self-driving truck space, including Aurora.