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Outrider builds Colorado warehouse to test its automated yard trucks

Test site mimics customers’ distribution yards, firm says.

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Supply Chain Quarterly Staff
By Supply Chain Quarterly StaffAug 24, 2021
Supply Chain Quarterly Staff
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Autonomous yard truck provider Outrider continues to leverage its venture capital backing to develop its technology, today saying it has opened a test site dedicated to distribution yard automation.

The 200,000-square-foot distribution yard in Brighton, Colorado, has 49 dock doors operating 16 hours per day, and will expand to 24-hour operation in 2022, the company said. The test facility is being used to validate Outrider’s autonomous capabilities, supporting the scaling of deployments at customer sites.

Golden, Colorado-based Outrider announced two funding rounds in 2020 totaling $118 million, and has since unveiled new products such as an automated tractor-trailer hitching system designed to boost efficiency in the constant re-positioning of trailers around distribution yards.

According to the firm, distribution yards are a prime opportunity for automation to improve their efficiency and safety, helping operators streamline an array of repetitive, manual tasks oftentimes performed in inhospitable conditions.

“Outrider’s new Advanced Testing Facility mimics the distribution yards of our Fortune 500 customers,” Andrew Smith, founder and CEO of Outrider, said in a release. “Operating our yard automation technologies under real-world conditions at both our test site and customer sites enables Outrider to deliver the most reliable and robust yard automation solution in the market. At this new facility, the Outrider System also completes end-of-line testing and calibration before shipping to our customers.”

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