Charger Logistics Plans Purchase of Up to 500 Aurora Driverless Trucks

Aurora Innovation announced on October 26, 2026 a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Charger Logistics under which the carrier intends to purchase up to 500 Aurora Driver-powered trucks, with delivery taking place over 2027 and 2028. The agreement builds on the customer contract the companies signed in July 2026 and initiates Charger’s plans to own and operate hundreds of driverless trucks on routes across the country.

The MOU is non-binding. Under its terms, Charger would purchase the trucks for deployment on current and new high-volume routes near the border and throughout the country. Aurora cautioned that the MOU may not result in a final agreement or binding orders on the anticipated timeframe or at all.

Charger Logistics President Andy Khera pointed to the carrier’s early experience with the technology. “Since launching autonomous operations along the Laredo corridor, we’ve realized immediate operational benefits that point to a clear path to scaling,” Khera said. “Aurora’s plans to open long-haul, high-volume routes position us to scale geographically while we integrate autonomy from our TMS to the road, building a resilient and autonomous ecosystem for our customers.”

Zac Andreoni, Aurora’s vice president of business development, said Khera and the Charger team bring decades of experience using technology to move large volumes of freight across the continent, which he said makes owning driverless trucks a natural next step. “Owning the physical asset is the logical choice for our customers: it makes today’s operations more efficient and enables carriers to grow their business, keeping them competitive,” Andreoni said.

Driver as a Service Terms

Upon a final agreement, Charger intends to subscribe to Aurora’s Driver as a Service (DaaS) model. Under that structure, according to the company, the customer’s ownership of the physical asset is intended to maximize Total Cost of Ownership savings, while Aurora in parallel expects a high-margin, capital-efficient, and asset-light business. Aurora describes DaaS agreements as a critical component of its plan to scale to 30,000 driverless trucks in 2030 and states that additional customers are pursuing DaaS contracts to own and operate their own fleets of driverless trucks. Andreoni added that, with the launch of its second-generation hardware and trucks, Aurora is ready to support customers’ ambitions to grow their networks and move more freight with driverless trucks.

Existing Operations and Fleet Plans

Charger Logistics USA is a privately held, asset-based transportation and logistics company operating across the United States and Mexico. The company provides truckload, dedicated, temperature-controlled, and cross-border services, supported by a warehousing and cold storage network that enables end-to-end management of the supply chain, and serves customers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, automotive, retail, and consumer products industries. Charger runs on a proprietary transportation management system and a suite of in-house applications that the company says deliver real-time visibility, execution, and data-driven decision-making across its network.

The MOU follows the customer agreement Aurora announced on July 28, 2026, under which Charger was to begin driverless hauls on Aurora’s second-generation driverless truck, starting between Dallas and Laredo, a lane that announcement described as one of Charger’s busiest freight lanes in the Sun Belt. That agreement was aimed at adding capacity on Charger’s network and driving higher utilization. Khera said at the time that deploying the Aurora Driver on one of the carrier’s busiest U.S. freight corridors was expected to enhance capacity, improve asset utilization, and strengthen service reliability for customers moving temperature-controlled, pharmaceutical, and other mission-critical freight.

The purchase intent also arrives weeks after Aurora’s September 23, 2026 Analyst and Investor Day, where the company outlined a 2030 vision targeting more than 30,000 driverless trucks in operation. At that event, Aurora said it was fully allocated to exit 2026 with 200 driverless trucks in operation through Transport as a Service agreements, and that Hirschbach intends to own and operate 500 trucks through a DaaS agreement, with truck delivery slated to begin in 2027. The company said it was in negotiations with additional customers for DaaS agreements. On hardware, Aurora stated that its second-generation commercial kit is engineered for a one-million-mile operating lifespan while cutting costs by more than half, and that Roush has begun volume upfitting with a target of reaching a 20-truck-per-week production rate in October. The Aurora Driver is currently upfitted on the International LT Series truck and integrated lineside on the Volvo VNL Autonomous at Volvo’s New River Valley facility in Virginia.

In its cautionary statement, Aurora noted that anticipated customer orders may not materialize, may be delayed, or may be subject to cancellation, termination, or reduction in scope. The company referred readers to the risk factors in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 11, 2026, and in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026.