PepsiCo and Gatik have signed a multi-year agreement to bring driverless trucks into PepsiCo’s North American food and beverage supply chain, with autonomous freight already moving daily across Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. Gatik calls the arrangement the largest commercial autonomous freight deployment to date, and the company reports more than 98% on-time delivery across its operations.
Highlights
- PepsiCo and Gatik signed a multi-year agreement to deploy driverless trucks across PepsiCo’s North American food and beverage supply chain.
- Gatik’s autonomous trucks already operate for PepsiCo in Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas, building on a relationship that began in 2022.
- Gatik reports more than 98% on-time delivery across its operations.
- Gatik describes the agreement as the largest commercial autonomous freight deployment to date.
Driverless Freight for PepsiCo’s Regional Networks
The partnership targets PepsiCo’s regional transportation networks, where products move from site to site every day. Gatik describes these as high-frequency, time-sensitive operations that are essential to keeping products flowing consistently. The companies frame the deployment as a way to improve delivery consistency, add capacity, and support customer service across a high-volume operation.
“Serving our vast network of customers requires a supply chain that is safe, reliable, and built for the future,” said Jim Farrell, PepsiCo’s senior vice president of supply chain. “Gatik is already operating inside our networks and brings the autonomous freight technology, commercial experience, and scale we need to strengthen service, add capacity, and move products more consistently for our customers.”
How Do Gatik’s Driverless Trucks Operate?
Gatik’s driverless trucks are built for end-to-end deliveries across highways and surface streets, using dynamic route orchestration designed for regional networks that span hundreds of pickup and drop-off locations. That setup lets PepsiCo modify route plans in response to daily operational needs — adding or removing stops, responding to shifts in demand, and adapting to activity levels across distribution centers. According to Gatik, the flexibility helps PepsiCo reduce variability, improve on-time performance, and add capacity without major changes to its existing operations.
“Autonomous trucking has reached commercial scale when it operates inside one of the most demanding supply chains on the planet,” said Gautam Narang, co-founder and CEO of Gatik. “That is what Gatik is doing with PepsiCo. Our autonomous trucks are already moving products every day across Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas, and this partnership is proof that Gatik is becoming central to how the world’s largest companies move goods.”
Adding Capacity in Hard-to-Staff Networks
PepsiCo tied the deployment to workforce planning, saying it is focused on adding capacity in high-demand regional networks that are hard to staff and critical to keeping shelves stocked. The company said the aim is to support its frontline teams with greater flexibility, consistency, and reliability across the transportation network. The agreement also builds on PepsiCo’s experience running one of North America’s largest private fleets.
Gatik’s Autonomous Freight Footprint
Founded in 2017, Gatik runs driverless trucks across markets that include Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Nebraska, and Ontario. The company develops AI-powered autonomous trucking technology and counts Isuzu Motors, NVIDIA, and Ryder among its strategic partners. The PepsiCo agreement extends Gatik’s push to scale its autonomous delivery network across North America.
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