Gatik is a autonomous vehicle start-up company focusing on the "intermediate link". This summer, it will start using its self driving truck to deliver Georgia Pacific paper products, such as Dixie cups and Northern quilt toilet paper, to dozens of Sam's club stores in Dallas Fort Worth area.
Delivery is scheduled to begin in July as part of a multi-year commercial partnership with Georgia Pacific and Koch industries' Transportation Division kbx. According to the partnership, gatik will provide goods 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the network of 34 Sam's club stores. Self driving box trucks can travel up to 300 miles a day.
Gautam Narang, the co-founder and CEO of gatik, said that their vision is much larger than it is now. "The goal of the first phase is to ensure that the network is ready for AV adoption," Narang said. "Our goal is long-term. We hope to deploy our trucks and make the network ready for nationwide expansion. Using a smaller 26 foot 6-level box truck for short haul transportation will produce better and more mature economic results for a larger 8-and-a-half-level truck. Using a 6-level truck is meaningful because for each of our customers, the focus and focus is on timely delivery, high-frequency delivery, and there is no need to wait for the truck to be fully loaded (start again). This cooperation will be the first time that gatik's technology has affected the level 8 short haul regional network. "
Before the covid-19 pandemic exposed the challenges and opportunities around the supply chain and logistics, gatik was a somewhat alien looking autonomous technology company. The company has established its own business model around short distance logistics, rather than directly serving consumers like many other AV start-ups engaged in sidewalk robots and robot axes.
Gatik has developed and is applying its autonomous vehicle technology to the "middle zone" on the premise that smaller self driving box trucks are used to transport goods from distribution centers to retail locations more effectively than Class 8 trucks.
Gatik began to gradually enter the market in 2019, and then took Wal Mart as its own investor and initial customer. Gatik launched a pilot project in Bentonville, Arkansas, to transport goods from medium-sized Wal Mart distribution centers to community markets.
Since then, gatik has started to transport goods for Wal Mart in Louisiana, started a completely driverless operation in Bentonville (meaning no safe driver is managing the truck), and conducted a pilot with Loblaw companies limited in Ontario, Canada. The company has also expanded its operating network to include large distribution centers.
Last year, gatik opened a autonomous vehicle facility in Texas, and received a new injection of US $85million from Koch disruptive technologies, a venture capital unit of Koch industries, and existing investors innovation ventures, WITTINGTON ventures, FM capital, dynamo ventures, trucks VC, angelpad and innovative ventures.