operating out of Salt Lake City, Utah recently completed the acquisition of Glid, LLC, a road to rail autonomous trucking company revolutionizing the way trucking companies can leverage the efficiencies of the rails. Glid is building first of Its kind autonomous road-to-rail shipping vehicles called Glider which enable fully-loaded semi-trailers access to rails where traditionally it didn’t make sense. The Company plans on owning and operating each Glider in its fleet, and providing a “Glider-as-a-Service” business model.
Each Glider is designed to carry a fully loaded semi-trailer (60,000-80,000 lbs) without any modifications to the trailer, on paved asphalt, cement, gravel or dirt and then transition to the rails by deploying full-sized rail wheels. While Glid is focused on moving dry van or reefer semi-trailers (35-47% of the total semi-trailer market), Glid will also be able to carry intermodal shipping containers. Once on the rails, Glids Gliders will be able to travel at train speeds of up to 70-80 Mph
Since Glids Gliders won’t travel over the road (yet at least…), their ability to carry weight drastically increases. A fully loaded train car can carry anywhere from 286,000 to 315,000 lbs. Since that is drastically more than a semi-trailer can carry over the road, there is a lot of capacity to add battery storage on Gliders without reducing the amount of cargo they can carry. In addition, when metal rail wheels hit metal tracks, friction is reduced which increases the range of our batteries.
Each Glider will be equipped with tested and proven autonomous software and technology that will enable them to autonomously connect to the king pin and rear axel of a semi-trailer and then drive from private lots and onto the rails, without ever needing a driver. Once on the rails, many of the hurdles over the road vehicles face with autonomous software is removed, making operation of Gliders safer. Gliders will be operated from a central command center where operators can remotely take over at any given time.
