Gatik has commenced fully autonomous commercial operations for Canada’s food and pharmacy retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited.
This involves transporting select online grocery orders for Loblaw’s PC Express service with a fleet of multi-temperature autonomous trucks.
Since January 2020, Loblaw and Gatik have transported more than 150,000 autonomous deliveries with a safety driver on board. These operations have had a 100 percent safety record.
Gatik’s fully driverless deployment is now the first time that an autonomous trucking company has removed the safety driver from a daily delivery route in Canada.
This enables Loblaw to operate more routes and make more frequent trips, thus creating a supply chain that is safer, more sustainable and more resilient without reliance on human drivers.
David Markwell, Chief Technology and Analytics Officer, Loblaw Companies Limited said:Working with Gatik, we’ve demonstrated that autonomous driving technology enables supply chain efficiency, moving more orders more frequently for our customers. 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’s fleet will now 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 routes.
Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder, Gatik said: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.
