YMX Signs Five-Year Deal to Run Outrider's Self-Driving Yard Trucks, With No Fleet Size Given

YMX Logistics will operate Outrider's self-driving system on its all-electric Orange EV yard trucks under a five-year agreement announced October 1, 2026. Deployments at customer yards are due to begin in 2026, which leaves the remaining three months of the year to put the first truck to work.

The terms come from the joint press release, which Electrek summarised on October 4. The deal is non-exclusive. YMX handles implementations and fleet finance; Outrider provides technical support and remote monitoring.

What Outrider's system does

Per the release, Outrider's trucks automate trailer movements: navigation, hitching and unhitching, positioning at dock doors, and brake-line connections, without added yard infrastructure. Electrek reports that the Orange EV trucks carry lidar, radar and cameras feeding a perception system that runs on NVIDIA DRIVE hardware, with 360-degree awareness of trailers, trucks, pallets and people.

The brake-line step is the one that separates this from a self-driving tractor that merely drives. Unite.AI, writing up the same announcement, says a robotic arm makes that connection. It also repeats the companies' claim of 14 safety mechanisms covering more than 200,000 yard-specific hazards, which is a vendor figure we could not check.

Item	Stated	Not stated
Term	5 years, non-exclusive	Minimum volume
Start	2026, food and beverage, retail, packaged goods, automotive	Which customers or sites
Fleet	All-electric Orange EV trucks	Number of trucks
Pricing	Capacity-based, per Unite.AI	Dollar figures

Why a yard operator wants it now

Both the release and Electrek lead with a shortage of qualified yard operators. They add diesel, which the release puts at $6.38 a gallon in the week of September 28, 2026. The pairing of electric drivetrain and autonomy is the pitch: fewer operators to find, and no diesel to buy.

YMX CEO Matt Yearling said in the release: "Outrider's self-driving yard trucks are a strategic addition to our Autonomous Yard Operating System." Outrider CEO Andrew Smith said: "Large shippers are focused on running complex operations and often lack the time and resources to evaluate, deploy, and support new technologies themselves."

The release also says Outrider's customers account for more than 20% of yard trucks in North America. That is a statement about the customers' fleets, not about how many of those trucks Outrider has automated.

What the yard operating system already did

YMX launched its Autonomous Yard Operating System on April 13, 2026. It cited a top-five U.S. grocery retailer's distribution center where the software cut the yard truck fleet needed and then spread to nine additional facilities within six months. Chief Operating Officer Erin Mitchell is quoted there. None of that involved driverless trucks; the Outrider deal is how they join the system.

What we do not know

Our earlier piece on FedEx's electric truck order from Harbinger covers the electric half of this pairing. Here the numbers that would test the claim are missing. The number to ask for is not trucks announced but trucks running without a person in the cab, per site, per shift. The release does not say whether early deployments carry a safety operator.

Safety certification is the one independent element. Electrek says TÜV SÜD confirmed Outrider's functional safety meets its Autonomous Vehicle Conformity Framework, and that NHTSA certification is not required off-highway. Our Tesla robotaxi piece covers the lidar argument for public roads.

What would change this read: a named first customer yard, a truck count, and hours of unattended operation. Until one appears, this is an agreement to start, not a deployment.