Key points at a glance
- Jungheinrich has taken a stake in automation specialist Navflex
- The partnership aims to automate truck loading and unloading
- Field trials with major customers are already underway
- The concept is designed to work without additional infrastructure
- The loading dock remains one of the toughest intralogistics areas to automate
Why the loading dock has been so hard to automate
Autonomous vehicles, robotics and automated storage systems are increasingly common in modern logistics facilities. Loading and unloading trucks, however, remains difficult to automate.
Unlike controlled warehouse environments, the dock presents many variables: different trailer types, changing load carriers, tight space, and fluctuating light and ambient conditions.
In addition, people, forklifts and other vehicles often operate in the same area at the same time. This raises requirements for automated systems—particularly for navigation, safety and reliable performance.
A joint dock automation solution from Jungheinrich and Navflex
With its investment in Navflex, Jungheinrich is aiming to automate a part of intralogistics that has seen only limited progress to date.
According to the companies, the development is based on a Jungheinrich vehicle platform that is being adapted for automated dock operations. Navflex is providing the software layer, including autonomous perception, navigation, safety functions and process control.
“Loading and unloading trucks is a critical bottleneck in material flow for many of our customers,” says Dr. Tobias Harzer, Chief Automation Officer at Jungheinrich AG.
The companies say the project focuses on safe operation in mixed traffic, where people and automated vehicles work side by side.
Navflex CEO Chuck Stovall highlights the complexity of the use case:
“We deliberately chose to tackle a problem that has long been considered nearly impossible to automate.”
Large-scale customer trials already in progress
The solution is already being tested with major customers in Europe and North America, the companies say.
The aim is to validate how reliably the technology performs under real operating conditions. Jungheinrich and Navflex have not provided a market launch timeline.
Dock automation is becoming the next focus area
Jungheinrich’s move reflects a broader shift in the transport and logistics sector. After years of investment in automating storage and picking, attention is increasingly turning to the handover between warehouse operations and road transport.
Companies are looking to reduce manual work, increase throughput and improve productivity at transfer points. The loading dock is widely seen as one of the areas with significant remaining potential for automation.
Other providers are also moving into this space. GXO Logistics, for example, put an automated autoload system for trailer loading and unloading into operation at its Elbląg site in Poland in early 2026—the first such deployment in Europe. While that approach focuses on automating entire loading processes, Jungheinrich and Navflex are pursuing a different route: an autonomous vehicle designed to operate independently around the dock and within the trailer environment.
A stake with strategic weight
For Jungheinrich, the stake is more than a financial investment. It provides access to a technology area that, so far, has largely been limited to pilot deployments.
At the same time, the Hamburg-based group is reinforcing its strategy of expanding further into automation, robotics and AI-enabled logistics solutions.
Whether autonomous systems for truck loading and unloading will scale widely remains unclear. The ongoing field trials should provide insight into how far dock automation has progressed—and whether one of intralogistics’ most complex processes can ultimately be handled with minimal manual intervention.
