A driverless truck cannot pull into a weigh station and hand an inspector its paperwork. On Sept. 21, Kodiak AI and PrePass announced their answer to that: Kodiak’s safety inspection records now feed into the screening and enforcement systems states run at the roadside, starting that same day in Texas and Louisiana. It tackles one of the infrastructure problems Kodiak needs sorted before the driverless highway launch it is targeting by the end of 2026.

The clearance comes out of a Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance program designed for trucks with automated driving systems, the Enhanced Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspection Program. Before a truck starts operating without a driver, a CVSA-trained inspector checks it for safety defects, and that clearance is good for up to 24 hours. PrePass, which carriers already use to skip weigh stations and pay tolls, carries the record to enforcement staff, who check it, approve the bypass and can send further instructions if they want. Whether a truck gets waved past the scale is still the state’s call. This is not Kodiak’s first try at the problem, either: in 2023 it piloted a similar arrangement in Texas with Drivewyze, a PrePass competitor.

For Texas and Louisiana, the draw is that they do not need a separate roadside process for these trucks: the clearance arrives through the bypass systems their enforcement staff already work with. Size matters here too. The PrePass bypass network covers 581 sites across North America, which gives other states an existing way in and gives Kodiak and PrePass room to grow.

Kodiak (Nasdaq: KDK) still plans to start driverless commercial service on public highways by the end of 2026, the timing it gave with its first-quarter results in May. It went public in 2025 by merging with Ares Acquisition Corp. II, and in 2024 it put its driverless system into trucks owned by customers. Werner Enterprises, C.R. England, Roehl Transport, IKEA, Bridgestone and General Dynamics Land Systems are among the partners and customers it has named publicly.

“The next barrier to scaling driverless trucking isn’t inside the truck. It’s the infrastructure around it,” said Chas Wurster, chief technology officer of PrePass.

For now, this covers two states, and Kodiak is still working toward a driverless launch by the end of 2026. If you run freight through Texas or Louisiana, this is the part of the driverless rollout closest to your lanes. Everyone else should watch which state signs on next.