Another driverless trucking venture is staking its claim to lanes on I-45 between Dallas and Houston. Bot Auto—a Houston-based autonomous trucking startup offering transportation as a service (TaaS) through its AI-driven fleet—is partnering with Kansas freight brokerage Ryan Transportation to launch “humanless,” autonomous trucking runs between the two Texas cities.

Founded in 2023 by Dr. Xiaodi Hou, the co-founder and former CTO of TuSimple, another autonomous driving tech company, Bot Auto aims to prove that autonomous trucking is “a viable capacity option for traditional brokerage operations.” To help fund its operations, Bot Auto raised a $20 million Series A round in October 2024, led by investments from Brightway Future Capital, Cherubic Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, First Star Ventures, Linear Capital, M31 Capital, Taihill Venture, Uphonest Capital, and Welight Capital.

Bot Auto’s driverless runs on I-45 are expected to launch this spring. The same feat has already been achieved by Pittsburgh, Pensylvania-based Aurora Innovation, which launched its own fully driverless trucking runs between Dallas and Houston in the spring of 2025. In October, Aurora launched another driverless trucking “lane” between Fort Worth and El Paso, and announced plans to deploy its next-gen hardware on “hundreds” of additional autonomous trucks in 2026.

News of Bot Auto’s planned freight trucking launch comes just days after Waymo launched its human-free robotaxi service in Dallas.

Bot Auto is focusing on an ‘overnight lane’

Bot Auto’s planned spring deployment centers on an overnight lane connecting Houston to the southern Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, a roughly 200-mile run “with a tight delivery window that has historically been difficult to service with human drivers,” the company said.

Overnight runs, Bot Auto noted, demand a driver who can depart on schedule, maintain consistent speed, and deliver within a narrow window every single night. Fatigue, hours-of-service limits, and driver availability make this a challenging lane to cover reliably with traditional capacity, the company said—adding that its autonomous trucks “face none of these constraints, making them ideally suited for high-frequency, time-sensitive freight.”

Robert Brown, VP of business development at Bot Auto, called the overnight run on I-45 “a perfect use case; the robot doesn’t get tired, doesn’t need a reset, and delivers with the same precision every single time.”

“This is an opportunity to provide a high level of service on a lane for a customer who demands essential attention to detail,” he added in a statement, “and our autonomous technology does exactly that.”

Jeff Henderson, an SVP at Ryan Transportation, said his company is “constantly evaluating new solutions that enhance service, safety and reliability for our shipper partners.”

“Forming this partnership is a strategic decision based on Bot Auto’s proven technology and the role autonomous trucking will play long-term in logistics,” Henderson added. “It will strengthen our ability to provide dependable, high-frequency capacity on time-sensitive freight while maintaining the operational standards our customers expect.”

With the launch, Ryan will be integrating Bot Auto’s TaaS model and driverless fleet into its expansive logistics network, offering shippers “a new layer of reliable, consistent capacity.”

Autonomous trucking competitors in North Texas

Bot Auto and Aurora aren’t alone in putting—or planning to put—18-wheelers and other trucks on North Texas highways with no humans in the cab. Self-driving truck developer Torc Robotics, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck, is establishing a major driverless trucking hub in Fort Worth to support autonomous freight operations on the I-35 corridor.

Kodiak Robotics has delivered refrigerated freight for quick service restaurants between Dallas and Oklahoma City with its own autonomous trucks. And Gatik has partnered with Kroger and with Pitney Bowes for self-driving deliveries in Dallas.

In April 2024, Uber- and Nvidia-backed Waabi, a Toronto startup, opened an autonomous trucking terminal in Lancaster, just south of Dallas, with its own plans to launch “driver-out” operations between the Dallas and Houston metros.

And Volvo Autonomous Solutions has a dedicated office in Fort Worth, from which it launched its first U.S. autonomous freight operations in December 2024 via a partnership with Aurora.

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