Caterpillar Expands Luck Stone Autonomous Hauling to More Quarries

YardFlow is expanding its yard automation software to all 200-plus facilities of a beverage giant after an initial 26-site deployment. According to a YardFlow analysis, the shipper moved nearly 5% more freight with the same headcount, which founder Jake Koppinger told FreightWaves represents tens of millions of dollars of incremental profit. The customer is rolling the system out from its largest facilities down to its smallest to achieve standardization, Koppinger said. YardFlow has processed close to 2 million shipments across the 26 sites, and the system runs at 99.9% uptime. The company's core product digitizes the driver journey from gate check-in through dock assignment to check-out and signed documentation, and the customer has also asked for a yard management system that YardFlow built and is now deploying, using machine vision cameras at the gate and on spotters to create a digital twin of the yard.

Luck Stone announced in mid-September 2026 that it had expanded its collaboration with Caterpillar to roll out autonomous hauling technology to two additional Virginia quarries, building on a site where autonomous Cat trucks have already moved more than 3.50 billion tons without reported injuries. The expansion includes the first-ever deployment of Caterpillar's autonomous haulage on Cat 775 trucks, and the company is pairing the automation with workforce skill development to address quarry safety and productivity challenges. The move reinforces Caterpillar's broader push into autonomy and AI, which analysts tie to higher quality recurring revenue, and follows the company's August update highlighting record backlog and heavy investment in digital and automation. Caterpillar's narrative projects $94.5 billion revenue and $17.4 billion earnings by 2029, with a $970.37 fair value implying 20% upside, while some of the most optimistic analysts already assumed revenues above US$112,200,000,000 and earnings near US$20,700,000,000 by 2029. Investors are still weighing rising tariffs and pricing pressure against the pace at which digital and service income can scale.

Samsara now expects a thinner free cash flow margin and a fatter operating margin for fiscal 2027, as the company pays upfront for the IoT hardware that carries its AI subscriptions. The CFO said Samsara buys the devices upfront while revenue comes back ratably over the customer contract, and the company cited the IoT devices that faster growth needs, inventory it is prebuying as a buffer, and higher supply chain costs in the second half of fiscal 2027. Free cash flow margin is guided about 100 basis points below fiscal 2026, which on the $2.04 billion of revenue guided for fiscal 2027 works out to roughly $20 million, while the non-GAAP operating margin guide rose to 21% from 20%. More than 20% of Samsara's net new contract value came from emerging products in each of the last three quarters, and deals with a top-five U.S. city included more than $2 million of emerging products in fiscal Q2 2027. Samsara crossed $2.1 billion in annual recurring revenue in fiscal Q2 2027, up 30% over the past year, and raised its fiscal 2027 revenue, growth, operating margin and earnings guides at one release.