McLane Goes Driverless in Texas, with Sun Belt Routes Planned by Year-End

McLane Company and Aurora Innovation announced on May 6 that McLane has approved fully driverless operations on the Dallas-to-Houston freight lane, with plans to expand to new routes between McLane distribution centers across the U.S. Sun Belt by the end of the year. The announcement, reported by CNBC and confirmed in a joint release on Businesswire, follows a supervised pilot that began in 2023 and has now logged more than 280,000 autonomous miles in Texas and 1,400 loads delivered for McLane. Aurora’s release attributes the transition to driverless operations to the pilot’s safety record and 100 percent on-time performance.

McLane is not a peripheral name in the Walmart ecosystem

Walmart sold McLane to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003. Under the renewed agreement announced by McLane in 2017, McLane became the sole provider of candy and tobacco products to the vast majority of Walmart’s retail locations and the exclusive provider of seasonal candy nationwide. McLane’s own May 6 release describes its current footprint as more than 80 distribution centers across the country, more than 25,000 teammates, and delivery to nearly every U.S. ZIP code, serving convenience stores, mass merchants, and chain restaurants.

The driverless phase keeps a hybrid shape

The pilot expanded during its supervised phase to two round-trips daily between Dallas and Houston, seven days a week. McLane and Aurora say the hybrid model continues into the driverless phase, with Aurora handling the long-haul middle mile and McLane drivers handling local deliveries to customer locations. The current Paccar-built trucks running McLane’s lanes still carry a human observer in the cab at the truck manufacturer’s request, and Aurora has stated that the observer does not operate the vehicle.

Aurora’s Texas footprint is widening before the McLane news lands

According to Aurora’s investor communications, the company is operating commercially across multiple Texas-anchored lanes and earlier this week added a Volvo Autonomous Solutions route between Dallas and Oklahoma City that is currently running in supervised autonomy, five days a week. In its Q4 2025 shareholder letter filed with the SEC, Aurora stated that it intends to exit 2026 with more than 200 driverless trucks in operation, supported by a new International LT Series fleet from Navistar, owned by Volkswagen’s Traton Group, that, per Aurora, is targeted to begin driverless operations without a partner-requested observer in the second quarter of 2026.

McLane declined to identify which McLane customers driverless service will extend to next. The Businesswire release states that Aurora has plans to serve additional McLane business in the future. In its Q4 2025 shareholder letter, Aurora stated that it expects a multi-fold increase in revenue in 2026.

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