Tech company opens first autonomous trucking facility in Houston

load up

Houston is now home to Kodiak and Ryder's autonomous "truckport" facility. Photo courtesy of Kodiak

In a major step toward driverless freight trucks hitting Houston-area roads, a facility for loading and unloading autonomous trucks opened recently near George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport

Miami-based transportation and logistics company Ryder operates the “truckport” for Mountain View, California-based Kodiak Robotics, which runs a network of autonomous freight trucks. The facility, located at 888 E. Airtex Dr., opened in December. It’s next to a Ryder maintenance center.

“The truckport can currently receive several truckloads per day, and the size of the Ryder facility provides the opportunity to scale much larger than that,” says Daniel Goff, director of external affairs at Kodiak.

“The number of employees stationed at the facility fluctuates day by day,” Goff adds. “Kodiak’s team that staffs the facility in this initial phase operates on a flexible schedule to align with the needs of the trucks that are utilizing the truckport.”

The Houston site is the first Kodiak truckport to be located at a Ryder facility. It serves freight routes to and from Houston, Dallas, and Oklahoma City.

Kodiak currently operates all routes with drivers on board, including its Houston-Dallas and Houston-Oklahoma City routes. The company plans to roll out its first driverless operations on Dallas-Houston route later this year, with the new Houston facility serving as a launchpad.

“Ryder’s industry-leading fleet services and vast footprint of service locations makes it an ideal partner as we scale autonomous trucks,” Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, says in a news release. “Expanding our network of truckports with Ryder will enable us to operate autonomous trucks at scale with our customers.”

The most recent version of Kodiak’s truck debuted in Las Vegas at the recent 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Kodiak says the truck is equipped with safety-oriented software and hardware (including braking, steering and sensors).

Kodiak’s sixth-generation truck builds on the company’s track record of real-world testing, which includes carrying 5,000 loads over more than 2.5 million miles.

Founded in 2018, Kodiak has been delivering freight in Texas since mid-2019, including on the Houston-Dallas route. Kodiak announced in 2022 that it had teamed up with Swedish retailer IKEA to pilot autonomous freight deliveries in Texas between the IKEA warehouse in Baytown and the IKEA store in Frisco.

From Your Site Articles
Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston Nobel Prize nominee earns latest award for public health research

Prized Research

Houston vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez can add one more prize to his shelf.

Hotez — dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics — is no stranger to impressive laurels. In 2022, he was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his low-cost COVID vaccine.

His first big win of 2025 is this year’s Hill Prize, awarded by the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

Hotez and his team were selected to receive $500,000 from Lyda Hill Philanthropies to help fund The Texas Virosphere Project. The endeavor was born to help create a predictive disease atlas relating to climate disasters. Because the climate crisis has ushered in changes to the distribution of diseases, including dengue, chikungunya, Zika, Chagas disease, typhus and tick-borne relapsing fever, it’s important to predict outbreaks before they become a menace.

Rice University researchers are collaborating with Hotez and his team on a project that combines climate science and metagenomics to access 3,000 insect genomes. The goal is to aid health departments in controlling disease and informing policy.

The Hill Prize, which is being awarded to six innovators for the first time, thanks to a $10 million commitment from the philanthropic organization, is intended to back ideas that are high-risk and high-reward. Each of the projects was chosen for its potential real-life impact on some of Texas's — and the world’s — most challenging situations. Hotez’s prize is the first Hill Prize to be given in the realm of public health. The additional winners are:

  • Hill Prize in Medicine: Kenneth M. Hargreaves, D.D.S., Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • Hill Prize in Engineering: Joan Frances Brennecke, Ph.D. (NAE), The University of Texas at Austin
  • Hill Prize in Biological Sciences: David J. Mangelsdorf, Ph.D. (NAM, NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center
  • Hill Prize in Physical Sciences: James Chelikowsky, Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin
  • Hill Prize in Technology: Robert De Lorenzo, M.D., EmergenceMed, LLC
Read about other Houston-area researchers recognized by TAMEST here.

How Houston's cost of living compares to other major Texas cities in 2025

Calculating Costs

A new cost-of-living index yields a result that many Houstonians will find surprising: Houston is not the most expensive place to live in Texas. Dallas and Austin are costlier.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index for 2025 shows Dallas ranks first in Texas and 24th in North America, landing at 65.8. The cost-of-living index compares the cost of living in New York City (which sits at 100) with the cost of living in another city. Austin is at 61.7, Houston at 60.6, and San Antonio at 58.8.

Houston ranks 40th overall in North America, out of 52 cities in the index.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index takes into account the cost of items like groceries, restaurant meals, transportation, and utilities. The index excludes rent.

When rent is added to the cost-of-living index, Houston is still third among Texas cities. Dallas grabs the No. 21 spot in North America (57.1), one notch above Austin (56.6). Houston ranks 35th (51.4), and San Antonio ranks 42nd (34.6).

Rent index
While Dallas holds the top Texas spot on Numbeo’s overall cost-of-living index, Austin faces the highest rent prices. Numbeo's rent index for Austin sits at 50.1, putting it in 12th place among major cities in North America and highest in Texas, above the indexes for Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Houston lands at 27th.

The rent index in New York City, which tops the list, is 100. As Numbeo explains, the rent index estimates the cost of renting an apartment in a city compared with New York City. If the rent index is 50, for example, this suggests the average rent in that city is 50 percent below the average rent in New York City.

Around Texas, the rent index is:

  • 46.2 in Dallas
  • 39.8 in Houston
  • 34.6 in San Antonio

Restaurant index
In contrast to its showing on the rent and cost-of-living indexes, Houston outranks Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio on Numbeo’s restaurant index. This index compares the prices of meals and drinks at restaurants and bars to those in New York City.

Houston sits at No. 25 on the restaurant index, at 68.9. Dallas comes in at No. 32 (67.1), Austin at No. 34 (66.6), and San Antonio at No. 36 (65.2).

The National Restaurant Association reported in December that menu prices in the U.S. had risen 3.6 percent in the past 12 months, outpacing gains in grocery prices and the federal government’s overall Consumer Price Index. Fortunately for diners, that was the smallest 12-month increase in menu prices since August 2020, according to the association.

Toast, which provides a cloud-based restaurant management system, says the higher menu prices reflect higher food prices.

“Food prices have been increasing due to inflation, labor expenses, fuel costs, and supply chain disruptions, all of which impact restaurant profitability, Toast says. “While raising menu prices is one option to combat rising food costs, some restaurants have introduced service charges and simplified menus to avoid passing all costs onto customers.”

---

This story originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap.com.

Houston startup taps strategic partner to produce novel 'biobased leather'

cleaner products

A Houston-based next-gen material startup has revealed a new strategic partnership.

Rheom Materials, formerly known as Bucha Bio, has announced a strategic partnership with thermoplastic extrusion and lamination company Bixby International, which is part of Rheom Material’s goal for commercial-scale production of its novel biobased material, Shorai.

Shorai is a biobased leather alternative that meets criteria for many companies wanting to incorporate sustainable materials. Shorai performs like traditional leather, but offers scalable production at a competitive price point. Extruded as a continuous sheet and having more than 92 percent biobased content, Shorai achieves an 80 percent reduction in carbon footprint compared to synthetic leather, according to Rheom.

Rheom, which is backed by Houston-based New Climate Ventures, will be allowing Bixby International to take a minority ownership stake in Rheom Materials as part of the deal.

“Partnering with Bixby International enables us to harness their extensive expertise in the extrusion industry and its entire supply chain, facilitating the successful scale-up of Shorai production,” Carolina Amin Ferril, CTO at Rheom Materials, says in a news release. “Their highly competitive and adaptable capabilities will allow us to offer more solutions and exceed our customers’ expectations.”

In late 2024, Rheom Materials started its first pilot-scale trial at the Bixby International facilities with the goal of producing Shorai for prototype samples.

"The scope of what we were doing — both on what raw materials we were using and what we were creating just kept expanding and growing," founder Zimri Hinshaw previously told InnovationMap.

Listen to Hinshaw on the Houston Innovators Podcast episode recorded in October.

View All Listings