Bot Auto is a Houston autonomous trucking company that hauls freight in Texas with semi trucks that have no one in the cab. Its first fully humanless commercial load ran overnight from Houston to Hutchins, just south of Dallas, in late April 2026. Shippers do not book Bot Auto directly through an app; the main channel is freight broker Ryan Transportation, and the company also takes freight inquiries by email.
Bot Auto came out of stealth in 2024, led by Xiaodi Hou, who earlier co-founded TuSimple. Its office is on Park Row Boulevard in Houston, according to the Bot Auto website.
Where Bot Auto trucks run
The route Bot Auto has named publicly is Houston to the southern Dallas–Fort Worth area, roughly 200 to 230 miles depending on the end points.
- February 25, 2026: Bot Auto announced a partnership with Ryan Transportation for an overnight Houston–southern DFW lane, with driverless runs expected to begin that spring.
- Late April 2026: Bot Auto said it delivered America’s first fully humanless commercial truckload: 230 miles from Riggy’s Truck Parking in northeast Houston to Safe Stop in Hutchins. The release says there was no safety driver and no in-cab observer, and that the load was booked by Ryan Transportation for a shipper with a tight delivery window. “First” is Bot Auto’s own wording; Aurora had already run driverless customer loads in Texas in 2025.
- October 13, 2026: In its hardware announcement, Bot Auto said it moves about 350 loads a month across Texas. It did not say how many of those run with no one aboard or how many trucks it operates.
Bot Auto has not published a list of other lanes. Its stated next step is more capacity in Texas and the Southwest.
How a shipper books a Bot Auto truck
Bot Auto sells “transportation as a service”: you pay for the move, not for a truck or software. Two routes exist today:
- Through Ryan Transportation. The February release says Ryan, a Shamrock Trading company ranked #19 on the 2025 Transport Topics freight brokerage list, is integrating Bot Auto’s driverless capacity into its network. If you already ship through Ryan, ask your rep about the Houston–Dallas autonomous lane.
- Directly. Bot Auto lists ship@bot.auto for freight inquiries on its website. It does not publish rates, lane schedules or a booking form.
Bot Auto says its cost per mile on the Houston–Dallas lane is already below a human driver’s cost on the same lane, but it has not given a number. Treat any rate as a quote, not a published price.
What happens if something goes wrong on the road
A truck with no one aboard still has people behind it. Bot Auto’s August 27, 2026 release explains the role of its remote assistants:
- They do not drive. The truck makes every driving decision itself.
- They talk to police, firefighters and other first responders who reach the company during an incident.
- They can turn on hazard lights remotely or help shut the truck down when an officer asks.
- Bot Auto has committed to using only U.S.-based remote assistants.
Bot Auto also says each new software version must pass scenarios drawn from more than a million miles of driving before it runs without a human, and it publishes a safety report. In November 2025 it announced insurance coverage for commercial driverless freight.
What changes in 2027
Bot Auto picked Lenovo’s AD1 computer, built on NVIDIA’s DRIVE Hyperion platform with DRIVE AGX Thor chips, for its next trucks. According to the October 13 announcement:
- Integration into Bot Auto trucks starts in the first quarter of 2027.
- Bot Auto estimates the full autonomy hardware, sensors included, at about $50,000 per truck.
- The company’s long-term goal is one billion autonomous miles by 2031.
Those are company targets. The details to watch are a second named lane, a truck count, and how many monthly loads run with no one aboard.
How Bot Auto compares with other Texas driverless truck operators
Texas is where most U.S. driverless trucking happens, and each company is at a different point:
- Aurora runs driverless loads on several Texas and Southwest lanes and targets 200 trucks by the end of 2026.
- Waabi runs Dallas–Houston customer loads with a human observer still aboard.
- PlusAI runs I-35 trials with a safety driver and targets 2027 for factory-built trucks.
- Kodiak runs driverless trucks off-highway in the Permian Basin.
Bot Auto’s difference is size and focus: one named highway lane, sold mainly through a broker, with no one in the cab on runs it calls commercial.