Canada’s largest grocer is now moving select omnichannel grocery orders with a fleet of autonomous box trucks.
Loblaw Companies Ltd. is partnering with autonomous “middle mile” logistics technology provider Gatik to transport orders for its PC Express buy-online-pickup-in-store ((BOPIS) service using multi-temperature autonomous box trucks, without a human safety driver.
Since January 2020, Loblaw and Gatik have transported more than 150,000 autonomous middle mile deliveries with a safety driver on board, featuring a 100 per cent safety record. The middle mile is the point in the supply chain where goods travel between warehouses or from a warehouse to a “last mile” pickup point.
According to Loblaw, performing delivery with artificial intelligence (AI)-based autonomous vehicles enables it to operate more routes and make more frequent trips, establishing a supply chain that is safer and more sustainable and resilient. The retailer is shifting out of pilot to fully driverless deployment following a three-month period that 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.
