Bot Auto names Brett Suma as president and COO to scale autonomous trucking

The autonomous trucking contention has a caller entrant with a distinctly old-school playbook. Bot Auto, caller disconnected completing its archetypal afloat humanless commercialized load connected a nationalist highway, is betting its adjacent section connected a freight manufacture seasoned who has spent astir 3 decades learning however to physique trucking networks.

Brett Suma is joining arsenic president and main operating officer, bringing with him David Stemm arsenic vice president of commercialized operations and Jessica Kane arsenic vice president of commercialized finance. The trio founded TrailerHawk.ai unneurotic earlier Wabash acquired it successful 2025. They are present reuniting to tackle 1 of the industry’s astir analyzable operational challenges: turning a technological milestone into a repeatable commercialized business.

“We person proven that humanless commercialized truckloads are possible, but we recognize that exertion unsocial cannot thrust worth creation,” said Dr. Xiaodi Hou, laminitis and CEO of Bot Auto. “This manufacture is analyzable for bully reasons, and gathering a scalable autonomous freight merchandise requires humility, flexibility, and relentless creativity.”

The Knight Transportation Playbook, Rebuilt for Autonomy

Suma’s freight acquisition started astatine property 19, moving nights astatine Knight Transportation to wage for college. From the beginning, trucking had him hooked. From 1999 done the company’s explosive maturation play successful the aboriginal 2000s, helium watched the founders physique a methodical freight web to provender their increasing fleet. It started by identifying corridors with the close freight density, matching them to operator populations, past constructing facilities to enactment 125 to 150 trucks per market.

“It was precise formulaic,” Suma said. “You had to place a corridor that acceptable your web that had entree to a definite level of inbound and outbound freight to beryllium capable to enactment the operator colonisation that you would request successful bid to enactment the existent operation of the facility.”

The quality now? Bot Auto does not request drivers.

“The 1 large payment that we person astatine Bot Auto is that we don’t person to truly interest astir the operator colonisation portion from a enactment position successful bid for america to scale,” Suma said. “But the freight inactive has to enactment for america and the marketplace inactive has to beryllium capable to enactment the magnitude of concern successful tractors.”

Purpose-Built Networks vs. Legacy Friction

Suma is blunt astir what separates Bot Auto from competitors bolting autonomous tractors onto existing operations. The math, helium argues, does not work.

“There are others successful the abstraction that are saying, ‘We’re going to deploy X fig of autonomous tractors into our network,’” Suma said. “And I look astatine it and I bash the mathematics due to the fact that it’s precise elemental mathematics to do. And I say, ‘OK, truthful they’re conscionable going to proceed to tally inefficient freight successful an inefficient way, but with an autonomous solution.’”