A Texas-Sized Announcement: Gatik and Pitney Bowes Partner to Transport E-commerce Shipments Across Dallas

When we arrived, we announced that we’ll be creating over 500 new jobs in the Lone Star State by 2025; since then, commercial interest in our solution has exploded, and that figure has begun to look like a rather conservative estimate.

This week we announced our latest long-term commercial partnership in Texas with Pitney Bowes — a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 — to transport their clients’ E-Commerce shipments across Dallas-Fort Worth.

There are a number of reasons why we’re super excited about this partnership.

Starting in early 2023, our industry-leading class 6 autonomous fleet will transport high-priority shipments across a network of known, repeatable routes to accelerate delivery frequency — establishing a continuous, operational loop across the Pitney Bowes E-commerce logistics network. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an intensifying demand across our customer base for autonomous trucks that can operate within urban and semi-urban environments; it’s fair to say that our partnership with Pitney Bowes reinforces that demand, and provides yet another layer of validation for Gatik’s use case, business model and approach to the development of autonomous technology. We’re thrilled to help Pitney Bowes accelerate the transformation of their supply chain by establishing a safe, secure and hyper-responsive autonomous delivery service in the greater-Dallas area, and significantly reduce logistics costs.

Let’s double-click on that last point.

With our autonomous fleet that’s purpose built for B2B short-haul logistics, we’re able to take out a significant portion of cost from the Pitney Bowes logistics equation and share those benefits back with our customer in the form of year over year discounts — all while inflation continues to drive transportation costs up. By reducing both cost and complexity, we’re enabling Pitney Bowes to better serve their clients at a time when E-commerce sales are rising dramatically and traditional capacity is increasingly strained with assets and driver shortages.

Data collected from each delivery will be used to improve network design and identify additional opportunities for cost savings and service improvements as Pitney Bowes looks to integrate autonomous vehicles across its national ecommerce logistics network. We’re talking about increasing asset utilization and supporting a shift to a more direct, high-frequency transportation network. The result? future-proofing our customer’s logistics operations at scale.

Gatik class 6 autonomous truck leaving Pitney Bowes’ E-Commerce Facility in Dallas, TX

Pitney Bowes is just one of a number of household names we’re partnering with in Texas. Earlier this year we announced our partnership with Georgia-Pacific and KBX to disrupt the class 8 short-haul market, delivering goods to a network of 34 Sam’s Club locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The operations represent the first time that class 6 autonomous box trucks have been deployed to disrupt short-haul logistics networks traditionally involving class 8 trucks. By replacing traditional tractor trailers with autonomous box trucks, Gatik’s operations are establishing a more responsive and flexible logistics network, increasing the cadence of delivery runs and the flow of goods, while reducing logistics costs and enabling near real-time inventory fulfillment.

Dallas-Fort Worth is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading logistics centers in terms of innovation, sophisticated infrastructure and a highly-skilled workforce. Combined with a dense customer base, a progressive and well-structured regulatory environment, and an ideal climate, continuing to expand our commercial presence in the Texas ecosystem remains a top priority for the company, and we’re working with the biggest names in the retail, E-Commerce and distribution sectors to make this happen.

Despite our rapid progress in the state, we still see this as Day 1. Watch this space — there’s a lot more to come.