Cat expands autonomous Cat 775 haul trucks to two more Luck Stone sites
Luck Stone and Caterpillar are expanding autonomous hauling to two fleets of Cat 775 trucks at Luck Stone's Boscobel and Bealeton sites in Virginia. Autonomous trucks have hauled more than 3.5 million tons at Bull Run since November 2024.
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Key facts, context, and what it means.
Key takeaways
Luck Stone will add fleets of autonomous Cat 775 haul trucks (71-ton payload) at its Boscobel and Bealeton operations in Virginia.
Self-driving haul trucks have moved more than 3.5 million tons at Luck Stone’s Bull Run quarry since November 2024.
Luck Stone and Caterpillar announced an agreement in December 2022; Bull Run launched in November 2024, with testing and validation to follow, and the expansion adds Cat 775 fleets at two more sites.
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More than 3.5 million tons. That's what self-driving haul trucks have moved at Luck Stone's Bull Run quarry in Chantilly, Virginia, since November 2024. Now Luck Stone and Caterpillar are expanding the technology to two more Virginia operations.
Under the expansion, Luck Stone's Boscobel and Bealeton operations in Virginia will each get a fleet of autonomous Cat 775 rigid-frame dump trucks, Don McLoud of Equipment World reported on Sept. 17. The 775, which carries a 71-ton payload, has never before been put to work with the self-driving MineStar system.
Caterpillar's Sept. 14 announcement fills in how the work gets done. Caterpillar will deliver the project, and Carter Machinery, the local Cat dealer, will provide support. The expansion brings Caterpillar's autonomous hauling technology to two fleets of Cat 775 trucks at the Boscobel and Bealeton sites. It also adds complementary systems that support loaders and other equipment on site.
The smaller truck carries the bigger test
Mining autonomy grew up on large trucks running around the clock. Quarries work differently. In Caterpillar's April 2025 release from bauma in Munich, Denise Johnson, group president of Resource Industries, said the Luck Stone project, then four 777s running Command, was teaching the company to automate fewer trucks that don't haul 24 hours a day and to reshape its processes for smaller operations.
In that April 2025 bauma release, Caterpillar said autonomous capabilities with MineStar Command for hauling on the next-generation 775 were under development, and that a release date would be announced later.
Four years from agreement to a second truck model
Among family-owned and operated producers of crushed stone, sand and gravel, Luck Stone is the largest in the nation. It is a division of Richmond-based Luck Companies. Caterpillar's November 2024 launch release said the two companies announced an agreement in December 2022 to speed up development of Caterpillar's autonomous solutions for quarry and aggregate applications. According to the same release, Caterpillar had spent two years embedded with Luck Stone to build expertise in quarry operations.
At launch, Caterpillar framed Bull Run as a first milestone, with testing and validation to follow before autonomy became commercially available in aggregates. Luck Stone's reasons have stayed practical. Travis Chewning, vice president of engineering and operations support, pointed in the 2026 announcement to a safer workplace, more consistent production for customers, and new skills for associates moving into technology-focused roles.
The Luck Stone expansion pairs the trucks with technology for loaders and other site equipment. Producers pricing autonomy should ask which machines in the pit need added technology to work alongside the self-driving trucks, not only which trucks qualify.
A quarry-sized slice of a mining-sized fleet
Caterpillar's 2024 release noted that its Command fleet already moved more tons each year than total annual U.S. crushed stone production.
What Boscobel and Bealeton will prove
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