YMX, Outrider Sign Five-Year Self-Driving Yard Truck Partnership

YMX Logistics and Outrider announced a strategic partnership on October 1, 2026, to expand the deployment of self-driving, zero-emission yard trucks at YMX customer sites. Under the five-year commercial agreement, datelined Henderson, Nevada, and Henderson, Colorado, YMX will operate and support the Outrider System in large enterprise customers’ yards.

Terms of the Five-Year Agreement

The release describes YMX Logistics as a national provider of integrated yard logistics for enterprise shippers and Outrider as the leader in autonomous yard vehicles for logistics hubs. The companies said the agreement represents Outrider’s most comprehensive channel relationship to date and establishes YMX as a full-service option for enterprise shippers to adopt and scale autonomous yard operations. The partnership is non-exclusive. According to the companies, it combines Outrider’s self-driving technology with YMX’s service offerings to give customers a turnkey path to automating trailer spotting with less deployment complexity and lower capital requirements.

“Outrider’s self-driving yard trucks are a strategic addition to our Autonomous Yard Operating System, expanding how we use technology to execute yard operations and create value for our customers,” said Matt Yearling, CEO of YMX Logistics. Yearling said YMX selected Outrider because of its approach to system safety, its use of advanced AI capabilities across diverse yard environments, and its operational maturity.

How YMX OS and the Outrider System Combine

According to the announcement, YMX’s Autonomous Yard Operating System, known as YMX OS, combines yard management technology, fleet operations, performance management, and data insights to improve throughput, service levels, and consistency across complex distribution networks, and Outrider’s self-driving yard trucks extend it by automating trailer and container movements. YMX’s official product page presents YMX OS as a single operational framework spanning workforce, asset, process, technology, data, ecosystem, sustainability, safety and compliance, and network operations, alongside service lines that include gate management, spotting and shuttling, trailer rentals, and dedicated freight.

According to the release, Outrider’s trucks navigate mixed-traffic yards, locate and move trailers, hitch and unhitch, precisely position trailers at dock doors and parking spots, and use a robotic system to connect and disconnect trailer brake lines. The system provides real-time trailer inventory tracking with no additional infrastructure, monitors the charge status of electric vehicles, and integrates with existing yard, warehouse, and transportation management systems.

Outrider offers the system as a subscription service that includes the autonomy stack, cloud-based management software, automated trailer inventory tracking, and 24/7 support, according to a company release issued July 10, 2025. The system’s TrailerConnect robotic arm connects trailer brake and electric lines with no modifications to trailers, and the system runs on Outrider-approved autonomy hardware and electric yard truck platforms from vendors including NVIDIA, Orange EV, RH Sheppard, and Yaskawa. For safety-critical systems and components, those partners work with Outrider’s development team to review and approve the company’s safety case for the use of their products in driverless operations.

Deployment Roles, Safety, and Electrification

Under the agreement, YMX will lead customer implementations, finance and operate the self-driving fleets, and provide on-site support. Outrider will support deployments and provide ongoing remote monitoring and technical support. The companies will jointly support site planning, deployment execution, and operating processes; the release describes the goal as continuously improving throughput, safety, and sustainability while simplifying the operational and change management required to advance yard automation.

“Large shippers are focused on running complex operations and often lack the time and resources to evaluate, deploy, and support new technologies themselves,” said Andrew Smith, CEO of Outrider. Smith said the partnership gives enterprise shippers a simple path to deploy and scale physical AI across their yard operations.

System safety was a key factor in YMX’s selection of Outrider, according to the release, which describes Outrider’s safety system as the industry’s first purpose-built for scalable driverless operations in mixed-traffic logistics yards, where self-driving yard trucks maneuver semi-trailers alongside personnel and manually driven vehicles. The release reports that TÜV SÜD, an independent testing and certification organization, determined that Outrider’s functional safety approach aligns with the requirements of its Autonomous Vehicle Conformity Framework.

Outrider’s July 2025 release provides additional detail: the safety system includes 14 safety mechanisms addressing more than 200,000 hazards identified as specific to yard operations, and the company built its approach using the ISO 26262 functional-safety standard for road vehicles and the ISO 21448 standard addressing safety in autonomous vehicles as starting points. The mechanisms include redundant hazard detection, fail-safe hardware redundancies, and real-time health monitoring designed to detect anomalies, override unsafe behaviors, and stop the vehicle when necessary. In that release, Outrider said commissioning and deployment of its latest-generation driverless yard trucks would begin with select enterprise customers in the second half of 2025.

The partnership announcement also addresses electrification. YMX offers capacity-based pricing rather than hourly rates, which the release says allows customers to maximize use of electric-vehicle yard technology, and Outrider designed its autonomous system from the outset for electric yard truck platforms. The companies called the combined offering increasingly valuable as diesel costs rise, citing U.S. on-highway diesel prices averaging $6.38 per gallon in the week of September 28, 2026. Initial deployments under the partnership will target customers in food and beverage, retail, consumer packaged goods, and automotive beginning in 2026, and Outrider said it is taking orders for deployments in 2026 and 2027.