PrePass and Kodiak AI announced a collaboration Monday that routes safety inspection records from Kodiak’s autonomous trucks into state roadside screening and enforcement systems. Implementation begins the same day in Texas and Louisiana.
The process runs through the PrePass platform, which commercial fleets already use for weigh station bypass and toll payment. Inspection information from a Kodiak truck reaches enforcement personnel, who verify it, authorize the bypass. They can also send additional instructions when they want them. The bypass decision stays with the state.
Kodiak (Nasdaq: KDK) is preparing to launch driverless commercial operations on public highways by the end of the year, the same late-2026 target it described in May alongside first-quarter results. The company went public through a de-SPAC merger with Ares Acquisition Corp. II in 2025.
“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. “By working with Kodiak to advance driverless trucking into real-world commercial operations, PrePass is operationalizing the blueprint for what comes next: bringing states, roadside infrastructure and trusted data together to make autonomous operations work at scale.”
What the CVSA Enhanced Inspection covers
The records come from the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Enhanced Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspection Program, written for trucks equipped with automated driving systems. A CVSA-trained inspector verifies that an autonomous truck is free of safety defects before it begins driverless operation, and that clearance holds for up to 24 hours.
Kodiak has put that process in front of enforcement officers before. It had piloted a similar setup in Texas with Drivewyze, a PrePass competitor, back in 2023.
“CVSA welcomes this collaboration between PrePass and Kodiak AI to support the implementation of CVSA’s Enhanced Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspection Program for autonomous trucks,” said CVSA Executive Director Collin Mooney. “As commercial motor vehicle technologies continue to advance, inspection and enforcement processes must evolve with them while maintaining a strong focus on transportation safety.”
Weigh station bypass beyond Texas and Louisiana
The PrePass bypass network spans 581 sites across North America. That footprint gives state agencies a way to handle autonomous trucks inside the systems they already run, without standing up a separate roadside process. It also gives the two companies a path beyond the first two states.
The Kodiak Driver operates in long-haul trucking, industrial trucking, and defense. The company put driverless technology in customer-owned semi-trucks in 2024. Publicly named commercial partners and customers include Werner Enterprises, C.R. England, Roehl Transport, Atlas Energy Solutions, Bridgestone, General Dynamics Land Systems, and IKEA.
“Launching driverless service is not just about building technology. It’s about building a solution that works in the real world,” said Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak AI.
“It enables us to provide critical information to commercial vehicle enforcement agencies, maintain compliance with safety requirements and scale the Kodiak Driver across the United States,” Burnette said.
Why this matters: Driverless trucks do not have a driver to talk to an inspector. Routing Kodiak’s 24-hour CVSA clearance through PrePass lets Texas and Louisiana handle those trucks inside existing weigh-station systems. It is an important infrastructure problem Kodiak has to solve before a year-end driverless launch.
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