On a two-lane highway outside Phoenix, a Peterbilt 579 tractor-trailer carrying 42 pallets of Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos pulls onto the shoulder and stops. The cab is empty.

The truck—operated by a startup called Gatik AI—has no driver, no steering wheel and no pedals. It is part of a growing fleet of autonomous trucks that PepsiCo has put into daily commercial service across Arizona, Texas and Arkansas.

For years, self-driving cars have been the stuff of futurist hype and regulatory paralysis. But in one corner of the transportation industry, autonomous vehicles have quietly become routine: long-haul trucking on the sunbaked highways of the American Southwest.

The Scale of the Operation

PepsiCo currently operates 41 autonomous trucks across three states, making roughly 200 deliveries per week. The company says it has logged more than 2.3 million miles with zero at-fault accidents.

“This is no longer a pilot program,” said PepsiCo’s chief supply chain officer. “This is how we move product in the Southwest now.”

The fleet uses a combination of Gatik’s medium-duty box trucks and Aurora Innovation Class 8 tractors. Both systems operate at Level 4 autonomy—meaning they can drive without human intervention in mapped geographic areas during favorable conditions.