Gatik expands autonomous truck fleet With Loblaw

Gatik, an autonomous middle-mile logistics company, announced a major expansion of its commercial partnership with Loblaw, Canada’s largest retailer, on Monday. The multiyear agreement will deploy Gatik’s autonomous fleet across Loblaw’s distribution network in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), with Loblaw making a strategic investment in Gatik to accelerate the scale-up.

Under the initial phase of the expansion, 20 autonomous trucks equipped with Gatik’s next-generation sensor suite will be deployed by the end of 2025, with an additional 30 autonomous trucks to follow by the end of 2026.

“This is going to be the largest deployment of autonomous trucks ever seen in North America,” Richard Steiner, vice president of government relations and public affairs at Gatik, told FreightWaves in an interview. “We’re no longer talking about just single routes at Gatik. We’re talking about networks.”

The autonomous trucks will operate on short-haul, middle-mile routes of approximately 40-50 miles, moving both dry and perishable goods to Loblaw stores. According to Steiner, operations will run 24/7. “Loblaw has placed a strategic investment in Gatik,” Steiner noted. “I think that speaks volumes to how Loblaw is looking to future-proof its supply chain with autonomous trucks.”

This expansion has been facilitated by Ontario’s new automated commercial motor vehicle program, which opened in August and allows for the operation of larger autonomous trucks under a regulatory framework that prioritizes safety. Initially, Gatik’s vehicles will operate with safety drivers on board, particularly for tasks like backing into docks and stores, with plans to transition to fully driverless operations in the future.

“The regulatory regime that’s been developed in Ontario is very much a safety-first regime,” Steiner said. “It’s been designed with a requirement that there is an additional layer of application required to remove the safety driver from the vehicle.”

Gatik has experience with driverless operations in Canada, having deployed the first driverless vehicles in the country in 2022 with Loblaw. The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario serves as the primary regulatory authority, but Gatik emphasizes its close collaboration with municipal partners, first responders and other stakeholders.

“We take great pains to ensure that we’re engaging folks not just once but on an ongoing basis as well because ultimately we’re deploying trucks in their backyard,” Steiner explained. “We want to make sure that they’re as comfortable with our tech as Gatik is.”

Gatik’s business model focuses on “known repetitive, predictable routes” within city environments, which differs from the long-haul, state-to-state routes typically associated with Class 8 trucks. This approach allows the company to deliver value quickly by operating around the clock while avoiding complex areas like schools, hospitals and heavily pedestrianized zones.

“These known repetitive, predictable routes, that’s been our bread and butter since day one,” Steiner said. “For us, the short-haul middle-mile space has always made a huge amount of sense because we can deliver that value very early on.”

The company currently operates approximately 100 vehicles for customers across North America, making the addition of 50 trucks for Loblaw a significant expansion of its fleet. Gatik’s constrained operational model, which involves a limited number of distribution centers delivering to a few drop-off locations per route, enables the company to advance toward fully driverless operations more quickly than other autonomous applications, such as robo-taxis.

“If you compare it to, say, for example, the robo-taxi model whereby you have to pick up and drop off a human being at an infinite number of locations, we stick to a limited number of distribution centers delivering to stores,” Steiner noted. “It is a constrained model. Keep things more simple. You will achieve that holy grail moment of driverless more quickly than other applications.”

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