Waabi's commercial load volume on its Dallas-Houston corridor has grown more than 80% this year, and on Wednesday the company added a second named carrier to that route: Coppell, Texas-based Warrior Logistics will run Waabi Driver-powered trucks on recurring freight between the two cities.

Warrior, an asset-based carrier founded in 2015 that runs more than 200 of its own trucks, has added an undisclosed number of Waabi trucks to haul recurring shipments for food and beverage and consumer goods customers. Neither company disclosed the fleet count or total loads moved.

The numbers Warrior is willing to put on the record are operational. Since commercial operations began earlier this year, the autonomous trucks have delivered 100% on-time pickup and delivery and zero safety incidents, according to Waabi.

The deal matters because of who signed it. Warrior is not a tech-forward unicorn betting on autonomy as a strategy. It is a conventional trucking company using autonomous units as capacity — the same way it would add tractors, just without bidding for drivers on lanes nobody wants.

What does the deal change for shippers?

For Warrior's customers, the practical effect is more trucks on core lanes at consistent service levels. Scott McFarlane, CEO of Warrior Logistics, framed it as a capacity problem first.

"Our customers want more capacity on our core lanes, and they want it to be consistent," McFarlane said. "Our partnership with Waabi gives us the flexibility to deliver that. Waabi Driver-powered trucks complement our professional drivers, build density on our power lanes, and add capacity on the routes that are less desirable for our drivers."

That last clause is the mechanism worth watching. McFarlane describes a network where autonomous trucks and company drivers run side by side — the autonomous units absorb freight on less attractive lanes, which keeps human drivers on the runs they prefer and raises utilization across the 200-plus-truck fleet.

Over the coming year, the two companies will jointly select and develop the next lanes for the autonomous trucks across Warrior's network, which suggests the Dallas-Houston corridor is a starting point rather than the full scope.

Lior Ron, COO of Waabi, said the partnership also functioned as a development loop. "Warrior has helped shape our technology over the course of our partnership and the impact we're seeing across their operations shows how we can help carriers take on more freight, serve more customers and grow their business," Ron said.

Why Warrior signed

McFarlane cited three reasons: a leadership team the carrier trusts, technology he called truly innovative, and a co-development approach that let Warrior see firsthand how safely the Waabi Driver performs before committing.

"The results on our own freight speak for themselves," he said.

Waabi's Dallas-Houston business is stacking up

The Warrior deal lands nine days after Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions began hauling freight for Warp, their first joint customer operation. Volvo VNL Autonomous trucks running the Waabi Driver move Warp freight directly to third-party facilities on the same Dallas-Houston corridor, with an observer in the driver's seat.

The corridor has history. Waabi moved its first revenue loads on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston in September 2023 — the same week it announced a 10-year capacity deal with Uber Freight. Two years on, it has multiple commercial customers on the lane.

The technology has broadened too. In July, Waabi said its software, trained only on a Peterbilt 579, drove a Volvo VNL Autonomous truck with no new data or fine-tuning — a significant generalization claim for autonomy software that typically needs per-platform training.

Still a human in the seat — for now

The trucks are not yet driverless. Ron told FreightWaves in January that Waabi will remove the driver only once the truck and its fully redundant platform are ready from the manufacturer. This month he said Waabi is "fully on track for driverless next year, with Volvo as the first OEM platform."

That timeline sets the stakes for the Warrior partnership. If driverless operation arrives on schedule in 2026, Warrior becomes a carrier with autonomous capacity economics on real freight lanes — and Waabi gets a second proof point, after Warp, that carriers will buy its trucks the way they buy any other equipment.