Ryder System Inc. and Waymo Via, the trucking and local delivery unit of autonomous driving developer Waymo, announced a partnership focused on providing maintenance for Class 8 autonomous trucks. The two companies say they will partner on servicing and evolving maintenance practices for autonomously driven trucks across Waymo Via sites in Texas, Arizona, California, Michigan and Ohio, as well as roadside service between hubs.
“While this partnership initially focuses on fleet maintenance, we see many opportunities to collaborate on autonomous trucking operations in order to successfully deploy these trucks at scale,” says Karen Jones, chief marketing officer and head of new product development for Ryder. “Already, we’ve collaborated on the layout and design of Waymo’s new Dallas facility to ensure it’s optimized for serviceability of trucks and for the transfer hub model they plan to pursue in the near future.”
Waymo noted that it offers more than a decade of experience in building autonomous driving technology, having driven more than 20 million miles on public roads across 10 U.S. states and 20 billion miles in simulation.
