ISEE has handed the physical side of its autonomous yard truck business — leasing, retrofitting and maintenance across North America — to Holman, the fleet services company that is also an investor in the Cambridge, Mass.-based autonomy developer, under a strategic partnership announced Friday.

The deal attacks a gap that has nothing to do with software. Customers wanting to automate yard operations must first source trucks, then integrate autonomy kits, deploy the vehicles, maintain them and run the yard.

"First of all, you have to figure out where to get the truck. Either buy it, or lease it, or rent it," ISEE President and co-founder Debbie Yu said in an interview with FreightWaves. "Then we have to retrofit the truck with our autonomy kit, deploy to the customer site, do the maintenance, and run the yard."

What does the partnership cover?

Customers have three routes into ISEE's autonomy system:

• Trucks they already own
• Trucks leased from Holman
• Autonomous-ready vehicles supplied by ISEE

Trucks will be retrofitted and integrated before delivery, backed by Holman's financing and fleet management services, according to ISEE's announcement.

Yu said doing retrofits in-house would have forced ISEE to hire many more technicians for work outside its expertise. Holman has retrofitted trucks for years and operates a nationwide network of shops and technicians alongside its leasing business.

Holman formalized its automation push in December 2025, when it launched Holman Robotics, a unit pairing financing with lifecycle management for robotic equipment.

"By combining Holman's robot fleet leasing and management infrastructure with ISEE's autonomous technology, we can provide customers with a practical solution covering the full vehicle lifecycle," said Joe Foster, Holman's vice president of robotics, in a statement.

Why is ISEE scaling now?

Yu described ISEE as at an inflection point. Prototypes and pilots required little retrofit capacity. Today, multiple Fortune 100 customers are interested in deploying fleets of autonomous yard trucks numbering in the thousands with ISEE over the next couple of years.

"We believe it's critical to actually align the partnership quickly," Yu said.

Retrofits cover trucks already in service. New units will come through OEMs, including terminal tractor maker TICO, which partnered with ISEE in April 2025.

"Not just retrofitting. We also need to do factory-built units through the TICO collaboration, starting from 2027," Yu said.

That timing matches the 2027 serial production target FreightWaves reported in June. ISEE will also keep working with other yard truck OEMs on new diesel, alternative-fuel and electric models, according to the release.

What does it mean for yard operators?

The structure matters for shippers and warehouse operators because it converts autonomous yard truck adoption from a capital project into a leased, managed service. Yu said retrofits let operators with trucks already working in their yards automate sooner, rather than waiting for factory-built autonomous units later in the decade.

Demand is rising as manufacturing, data centers and infrastructure grow in the United States, Yu said, including from enterprise customers "that we never imagined before." With retrofit capacity, financing and maintenance now outsourced to Holman, ISEE enters the next two years positioned to convert pilot interest into fleet-scale deployments as the 2027 TICO production window approaches.