Gatik, Loblaw Companies Partner on Driverless Delivery in Canada
October 5, 2022
Gatik, which is developing autonomous middle mile logistics solutions, has announced the launch of a fully driverless commercial operation with Canada’s Loblaw Companies, a leading food and pharmacy retailer. Gatik said it 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, the two companies have transported more than 150,000 autonomous deliveries with a safety driver on board, with a 100% safety record. The fully driverless deployment now represents the first time an autonomous trucking company has removed the safety driver from a daily delivery route in Canada, Gatik said. This now enables Loblaw to operate more routes and make more frequent trips, establishing a supply chain that is safer, more resilient and more sustainable.
Gatik said an extensive, third-party safety review commissioned by Loblaw endorsed the routes for safe and secure operations. The review took place over a three-month period, and included assessment of end-to-end technology, development and deployment processes, standards and regulatory compliance, risk assessment and evaluation of control measures, as well as physical component, subsystem and vehicle-level testing. The assessment included sending degraded and incorrect sensor data, GPS jamming and spoofing, incorrect acceleration with objects in front, and other tests. Gatik said this paved the way for its fleet to transport ambient, 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 and predictable routes.
“Working with Gatik, we’ve demonstrated that autonomous driving technology enables supply chain efficiency, moving more orders more frequently for our customers,” said David Markwell, chief technology and analytics officer at Loblaw Companies. “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.”
“This milestone marks the expansion of Gatik’s autonomous delivery service to Loblaw’s customers across multiple sites,” said Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Gatik. “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.”
Gatik said it focuses exclusively on facilitating frequent, point-to-point deliveries across the middle mile with its commercial-grade autonomous technology, purpose-built for B2B short-haul logistics, as opposed to long-haul trucking or last-mile delivery services. In 2021, the company removed the safety driver from a commercial delivery route on the middle mile, transporting goods for Walmart in Arkansas.
For more details on the company and its offerings, visit the Gatik website here.
