Supply Chain Tech Monthly Roundup — October 2022 — Autonomous Trucking

And…we’re back! Welcome to the October monthly roundup of the supply chain tech industry where I’ll be providing quick tidbits and links about recent logistech news around companies, supply chain, trends, and innovation.

In this month’s roundup:

• Autonomous Trucking
• Company News
• Fundraising, M&A, and Stocks
• State of the Industry
• Companies Hiring

Autonomous Trucking

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s another autonomous trucking partnership.

In an effort to stay at the forefront of autonomous trucking, Werner has partnered with several AV trucking startups such as Aurora, Kodiak, and Embark. Werner says they partner with multiple AV trucking companies to see how each company’s tech is progressing. The trucking company expects the full AV technology to be years out but they want to at least have a seat at the table. At the end of September, Werner announced another partnership this time with Kodiak Robotics for an autonomous trucking lane.

Kodiak Robotics and IKEA partner to test autonomous delivery of Ikea products in Texas. This is a three-month partnership where every day a driver picks up a loaded trailer in Houston and rides along with the self-driving truck to Dallas. Kodiak is discussing a longer-term deal with IKEA.

Waymo completed deliveries of Constellation Brands’ beers earlier this year during a Texas-based pilot using their autonomous fleet. This pilot was launched in partnership with C.H. Robinson where they autonomously hauled over 1M+ pounds of freight for Constellation Brands. It was a 250-mile trip from a Dallas warehouse to a Houston-area distributor. It ran from April through the summer.

Gatik launches fully autonomous commercial truck operations in Canada through a partnership with Loblaw Companies to deliver online grocery orders. Gatik’s autonomous refrigerated box trucks complete runs for Loblaw’s online pickup and delivery service. The partnership started in 2020 in Toronto and now consists of five trucks operating 12 hours a day with no drivers.

Schneider National and Torc Robotics announce a partnership to pilot Torc’s autonomous trucking fleet. Schneider will provide Torc with freight loads to help with the development of its autonomous technology. It is a multi-phase agreement starting with an initial evaluation of the technology and then system integration to daily commercial operations pilots in 2023. Schneider is similar to Werner in that they work with multiple AV trucking companies including Aurora and TuSimple as well.

Company News

Food delivery robots are coming to Chicago. Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection will issue two-year permits to delivery robot companies that apply for the pilot. Delivery robot companies will partner with restaurants and grocery stores to deliver customer orders. The robots will be limited to sidewalks and crosswalks within a small radius of the businesses.

United Natural Foods will deploy Symbiotic’s AI technology in five of its distribution centers over the next four years. Symbiotic offers an end-to-end automation system with robots handling inbound, storage, retrieval, and outbound processes in warehouses. The deal gives UNFI the option to scale Symbiotic’s systems to additional warehouses.UNFI also signed a deal with Symbiotic’s competitor Locus Robotics to help speed up fulfillment as well.

PepsiCo confirms that they expect to start receiving orders of Tesla Semis on December 1st. PepsiCo will be the first company to receive orders for the electric semi-truck that was supposed to start production in 2019. The trucks will be used at their Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, CA, and its beverages factories in Sacramento, CA. PepsiCo reserved 100 of the Tesla Semis in 2017 as part of its effort in obtaining net-zero emissions by 2040.

Amazon is shutting down its home delivery robot, Scout. The autonomous sidewalk robot was launched about three years ago. Amazon has since announced that the robot was not meeting customers’ needs and that they were disbanding the 400-person team who were working on the project. A skeleton crew will continue to work on the idea of an autonomous robot but not in its current form. On the flip side, Amazon is making headway on its piece-picking robots.

Layoffs continue in the supply chain tech space:

• Convoy, a Seattle-based trucking marketplace, announces a second round of layoffs after laying off 7% of their workforce this summer. Convoy’s CEO says they are going through a reorganization and realignment.
• Delivery company Gopuff continues layoffs and outsourcing. About 250 Gopuff employees were let go as part of their 10% workforce reduction. Read this Bloomberg article that goes into what went wrong.

It also hasn’t been a good week for founders either:

• Nikola founder Trevor Milton has been found guilty of three counts of fraud — one of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Milton was found to have lied to investors repeatedly to collect money.
• TuSimple co-founder/CEO/president/CTO/chairman Xiaodi Hou was fired from all of his posts. The FBI, SEC, and CFIUS are investigating TuSimple’s relationship with Hydron, a hydrogen-powered trucking startup backed by Chinese investors. The investigation centers around whether TuSimple improperly financed and transferred technology to Hydron which could potentially breach their fiduciary duties and securities law since it relationship wasn’t properly disclosed.

Fundraising, M&A, and Stocks

October supply chain tech funding: $893M+

November supply chain tech funding so far: $275M+

• Walmart acquires Alert Innovation, an e-grocery automation firm that makes inventory-handling technology. This is a step towards Walmart’s goal of adding automated micro-fulfillment centers to their stores.
• Noodle.ai raises $25M Series C led by ServiceNow and Honeywell. The money will go towards the expansion of Noodle’s supply chain system of intelligence.
• Altana raises $100M Series B led by Activate Capital. Altana is making a supply chain single source of truth that can help identify risks. The money will go towards the platform and product development.
• Fox Robotics, an autonomous forklift startup, raises $20M. The company plans to use the money to ramp up production, invest in talent, and expand globally.
• Bright Machines raises $132M. The company is focused on building “micro-factories” — software-driven production lines that rely on robotics and automation.
• Loop raises $24M Series A led by Founders Fund. The company helps companies analyze, audit, and pay their freight invoices.
• Grip, a perishable shipping company, comes out of stealth mode with $2M pre-seed funding. The company plans to use the money for product development and hiring.
• Dropit raises $25M Series C. Dropit is a retail technology platform that helps unify online and in-store inventories. The company plans to use the money for expansion in the U.S.
• Smartex raises $24.7M Series A to bring smart technology to textile manufacturing. The money will be used for hiring and global expansion.

State of the Industry

Warehouses get a makeover as companies seek to appeal to workers. Companies are adding amenities to warehouses to help recruit and retain workers. REI and McKesson are adding features such as natural light, automation to ease work burdens, fitness centers, and outdoor work areas. McKesson in particular installed robotic pickers that help relieve their workers of strenuous tasks.

IFR: Industrial robots and cobots installs hit “all-time high” globally last year. 517,385 new industrial robots were installed globally in 2021, up 31% from 2020. There are now 3.5 million total operational robots across the globe. Asia is currently the largest market for industrial robots and the automotive industry remains the number one adopter of robots.

Meet the army of robots coming to fill in for scarce workers. A half-million industrial robots were installed last year up 22% from the previous year. The article talks about the phenomenon called “roboconomy”. This is a future where we will start to depend on robots more and more to do things like grow our food and make our goods. Service robots which include delivery robots and robots that unload trucks are being adopted at a rapid pace. Over a thousand companies are manufacturing service robots which is 10x more than industrial robot manufacturers. The article finishes by talking about how while robots have made improvements they are still fairly clumsy and inflexible. Boston Dynamic’s Stretch robot that can unload trucks is limited to a certain shipping container environment and must have boxes that are all relatively the same size, under 50 pounds, and stacked on the floor. There will need to be a middle ground where robot manufacturers make their robots more agile and companies remodel their environments to accommodate these robots.

Logistics Operators Find Robots Are Helping Recruit Tech-Savvy Workers. Companies that are investing in automation are saying that it is helping them bring in a new generation of tech-savvy workers. Mondelez International, which is one of these companies, says some roles will shift from physical work to positions managing technology. Employees will be switching to jobs that will likely be more rewarding because they are now doing more mental work instead of strictly physical work. The automation shift is also helping recruit a new generation of supply chain college students as they want to work with more forward-thinking companies.

Trucking executives share autonomous vehicle timeline projections. Trucking leaders from companies such as J.B. Hunt and American Central Transport gathered together at FTR’s annual conference in Indianapolis. The leaders expressed interest in yet were cautious about autonomous trucking. They weren’t sure how quickly their companies would adopt the tech and weren’t even sure if they would see it fleshed out in their lifetime. Some concerns mentioned include cybersecurity and public acceptance.

Companies are implementing new technologies that make their supply chain more resilient yet cost-effective. The article goes on to mention several technologies making an impact:

• AI + human intelligence (ex: cobots)
• 3D printing
• Recognition technology
• Digital manufacturing solutions
• 3D simulation (digital twins)
• Logistics technology

Podcast Recommendations:

• The New Warehouse Podcast — Zebra Vision Study
• The New Warehouse Podcast — Plus One Robotics
• The Bootstrapper’s Guide to Logistics — Modeling Business Models

Companies Hiring

Altana

• Network Data Scientist — Remote
• Product Design Lead — Remote
• Federal Solutions Analyst — Washington D.C.

Loop

• Product Manager — Remote
• Customer Success — Remote
• Software Engineer, Full-Stack — Remote

Smartex

• Project Manager — Remote
• Electronics Engineer, Exploratory Projects — Remote
• Senior Machine Learning Engineer — Remote

Follow me on Twitter where I share even more supply chain tech news here.