Operations/Trucking
Operations · Drayage fleet

Trucking

Driverless electric trucks carry boxes between IC terminals, the warehouses of the port region and the inland rail hub, dispatched by The Brain.

Phase 4 · 2030–2032Planned
Fleet
500 trucks
Truck turn
20 min
Cost
≈ $0.95 / mile
Diesel
0
The dray network — schematic
Terminal gate to warehouse and rail hub, within 40 km
Out
Imports leave the gate in booked slots for warehouses and the inland rail hub.
Back
Exports and empties return on the same truck: 1.3 boxes per terminal visit.
Swap
A charged pack goes in at the terminal hall in three minutes. No truck waits to charge.
I · The operating model

The fleet is the first customer.

IC’s own drayage fleet is the launch customer for its driverless trucks. It starts at IC terminals, runs every box The Brain assigns it, and grows with each new terminal.

01 · Launch customer

The first driverless fleet

The fleet buys every truck IC builds in the first years and runs it on known lanes between IC terminals and the port region. Each truck starts with the terminal’s own digital twin.

02 · Lanes

Port, warehouse, rail hub

Trucks run from the terminal gate to warehouses within 40 km and to the inland rail hub. Longer hauls go by IC train.

03 · Gate

No queue at the gate

Every truck arrives in a booked slot with its box staged at the interchange. The camera gate clears it in a minute, and the turn at the terminal is 20 minutes.

04 · Both ways

Loaded out, loaded back

The Brain pairs each import with an export or an empty for the return leg: 1.3 boxes per terminal visit.

05 · Power

The yard’s battery

The truck carries the terminal tractor’s 450 kWh pack. A charged spare is swapped in three minutes at the terminal or the rail hub.

Terminal tractor →
06 · People

One supervisor per 25 trucks

Twenty supervisors a shift answer the questions a truck cannot settle alone. They set the next step; the truck drives it.

II · A truck’s day

Eight turns, two swaps, twenty hours on the road.

Each turn is one round trip of about 80 km: twenty minutes at the terminal, twenty at the customer and fifty-three on the road each way. The pack is swapped after the fourth and the eighth turn.

One truck, one day
Each turn uses 80 kWh of the 450 kWh pack. Four turns use 320 kWh and leave 29% in reserve at every swap.
Turns a day
8 per truck
4,000 turns a day across 500 trucks
Boxes a day
≈ 5,200
72% of the reference terminal’s truck boxes
Energy
1.0 kWh / km
a 36 t truck at 80 km/h on a level road
Truck turn
20 min
at the IC terminal; 55–60 min at LA/LB today
III · The truck

A cab-less electric truck built by IC.

The tractor unit has no cab. It pulls a standard chassis with a 40 ft box, on the same pack, drives and compute family as the terminal tractor. Design specification.

Specification
Drayage truck
ConfigurationCab-less 6×4 tractor with a 40 ft chassis; 36 t gross
Drive2 e-axles × 250 kW on an 800 V bus; 105 km/h top, held to the posted truck limit
Pack450 kWh solid-state, the terminal tractor’s pack; 405 kWh usable; swapped in 3 min
Energy1.0 kWh / km; 80 kWh a turn; charged at 150 kW
Sensors12 cameras, 4 long-range lidars, 6 radars, wheel-speed and load sensing on every axle
Compute2 heavy AI modules: 16 cores and 4 lockstep real-time cores, 5,000 TOPS, 128 GB LPDDR6 at 600 GB/s, 100 W each
Safety controller4 lockstep cores, 40 TOPS, 12 W, SIL 3; 16 nm with 15-year supply
RedundancyEvery sensor is wired to both compute modules. Each module is primary for its zone and hot standby for the other.
SafetyA software fault can never drive the truck outside its certified safe envelope. The safety controller has its own two short-range radars, wheel-speed, steering-angle and brake-pressure sensors and an inertial unit.
Service lifeCompute is a line-replaceable unit, swapped at mid-life
Yard

Terminal tractor

The road train that shares the truck’s pack and swap hall.

Terminal tractor →
Interchange

Straddle carrier

Sets each box on the truck’s chassis at the interchange.

Straddle carrier →
Operations

Terminals

The gate slot, the staged box and the 20-minute turn.

Terminals →
Operations

Rail network

The inland hub, where the truck hands the box to an IC train.

Rail network →
IV · On The Brain

Every truck, box, gate slot and dock, one plan.

The Brain assigns each box to a truck, books the gate slot, the yard pick, the swap lane and the customer dock together, and re-plans the moment the road changes.

Runs on The Brain
How a truck takes its orders
Common pictureEvery IC truck and the box on it, positioned 10 times a second; road speeds and closures across the port region
Digital twinRoads, gates, docks and swap lanes run forward; each arrival predicted to the minute
Data modelOne record per box: the same record on the ship, in the terminal, on the truck and on the train
Decision layerWhich truck takes which box, when and by which road; each import paired with a return load
OrchestrationGate slot, yard pick, swap lane and customer dock booked in one step
AgentsOne per truck and one per box on the road
LinkPrivate 5G at the terminal and the hub, public 5G on the road; ≈ 80 kbit/s a truck. Braking and steering close aboard
SupervisorsTwenty a shift answer the questions a truck cannot settle alone; they never steer
The Brain dispatches; the truck drives. Commands pass from the truck agent through the certified safety channel to the drives, steering and brakes, never around it.
V · Operating figures

The first fleet.

Design specification.

Fleet
500 trucks
Turns
8 a truck a day
Round trip
≈ 80 km
Boxes
≈ 5,200 a day
Truck turn
20 min
Energy
1.0 kWh / km
Charging load
≈ 15 MW average
Pack swaps
≈ 1,000 a day
Charging bays
120 × 150 kW
Spare packs
150
Supervisors
20 a shift
Cost
≈ $0.95 / mile
Today vs IC
Port drayage today beside the IC fleet
Today · port drayageIC design
Truck turn55 min at Long Beach, 60 min at Los Angeles (Sep 2026)20 min: slot booked, box staged, camera gate in a minute
FuelDiesel at $6.529 a gallon, US average (Sep 2026)Grid power, ≈ 1.1 kWh per km from the meter
Cost$2.336 a mile, average US truck operating cost (2025)≈ $0.95 a mile
Fleet≈ 15,000 drayage trucks active at LA/LB, one driver each (Jan 2024)500 driverless trucks, 20 supervisors a shift
Emissions195 zero-emission Class 8 trucks at Los Angeles (Jan 2024)Every truck battery-electric; 0 diesel
The IC column is the design shown on this page. Sources for the Today column are listed in BUILD_NOTES.md.
Runs on The Brain
Every truck, box, gate slot and dock is planned in The Brain’s digital twin and re-planned the moment the road changes.
See how it works →