Gatik Launches Canada's First Fully Driverless Delivery Service

Gatik, an autonomous middle mile logistics group, has launched its fully driverless commercial operations in Canada with the country's leading food and pharmacy retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited. Gatik is now moving select online grocery orders, for Loblaw’s PC Express service, with a fleet of multi-temperature autonomous box trucks.

Since January 2020, Loblaw and Gatik have transported more than 150,000 autonomous deliveries with a safety driver on board.

Gatik’s fully driverless deployment represents the first time that an autonomous trucking company has removed the safety driver from a daily delivery route in Canada.

Gatik’s fleet is now transporting refrigerated, and frozen goods seven days a week from a Loblaw distribution facility to five nearby retail locations in the Greater Toronto Area on fixed, repetitive, predictable routes.

In 2021, Gatik became the first autonomous trucking company worldwide to remove the safety driver from a commercial delivery route on the middle mile, transporting goods for Walmart in Arkansas, US.

Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder, Gatik, says: “This milestone marks the expansion of Gatik’s autonomous delivery service to Loblaw’s customers across multiple sites. Canada is the latest market in which we’ve launched our fully driverless service, further validating that the tangible benefits of autonomous delivery are being realized first in B2B short-haul logistics. It’s a privilege to achieve this commercial and technical landmark with Canada’s largest retailer.”

“Working with Gatik, we’ve demonstrated that autonomous driving technology enables supply chain efficiency, moving more orders more frequently for our customers,” adds David Markwell, Chief Technology and Analytics Officer, Loblaw Companies Limited. “Being the first in Canada with this technology and deploying a fully driverless solution is exciting and illustrates our commitment to making grocery shopping better for customers.”

Gatik partners with industry leaders including Ryder, Goodyear, Isuzu and Cummins.

The company has offices in Toronto, Ontario and Mountain View, California