Smart Freight Centre and Catalyst Mobility have facilitated an order for 2,500 battery-electric Class 8 trucks on behalf of a coalition of cargo-owning shippers — the largest electric truck order placed in the U.S. to date, and one that will nearly double the nation's electric Class 8 fleet.

The deal runs through the Zero-Emission Truck Shipper-Carrier Alliance Leading Electrification (ZET SCALE), a program the two organizations jointly operate. Its mechanism is straightforward: pool freight demand from shippers and carriers so manufacturers bidding in a competitive request for proposals can price against higher order volumes rather than single-fleet purchases.

Founding shippers in the alliance include Microsoft and PepsiCo, among others.

"Microsoft is working to turn our sustainability commitments into operational reality," said Nico De Golia, Director of Sustainability for Cloud Supply Chain Global Operations at Microsoft. "Our participation in ZET SCALE does that for road freight, by signaling real demand for electric trucks so the low-carbon option becomes competitive for moving our cloud infrastructure."

Tesla primary; Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo secondary

The alliance evaluated OEM bids on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Tesla emerged as the primary OEM for the initial 2,500 trucks. Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were selected as secondary OEMs that participating carriers can draw on depending on their operational requirements.

Dan Priestley, Director for the Tesla Semi Program, framed the win in cost-per-mile terms rather than emissions terms.

"The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel," Priestley said. "ZET SCALE's goals are exciting because they take the operational cost advantage and predictability that electricity provides and amplifies it at scale. We are proud to have been the primary selection in this RFP and look forward to giving shippers and carriers a new competitive edge."

Financing structure shifts residual value risk

The procurement structure matters as much as the volume. ZET Financial, a strategic partner to the alliance, is issuing the purchase order for the initial 2,500 trucks under RFP 1 and will deploy them through its fair market value lease program, ZET Lease. The alliance says the design removes residual value risk from fleet balance sheets — historically one of the main blockers carriers cite when weighing electric truck purchases against diesel units with established resale markets.

Deployment will span ten freight hubs: Southern California/Los Angeles, Northern California/Stockton, Central California/Bakersfield, Seattle/Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, the Chicago area, Atlanta, and Northern New Jersey/Newark/New York City. The corridor geography tracks dense, high-utilization freight lanes where electric Class 8 economics close fastest against diesel.

Scale target: 10,000 trucks

ZET SCALE aims to expand the model to 10,000 or more electric trucks and is actively recruiting additional shipper and carrier participants for future deployment rounds. That figure would represent a step-change in U.S. fleet electrification, given the current order alone nearly doubles the existing electric Class 8 population.

Christoph Wolff, CEO of the Smart Freight Centre, said the model's core innovation is risk distribution across the freight chain.

"Every part of the freight industry wants cleaner trucks, but until now each company faced that transition — and its risks — alone," Wolff said. "ZET SCALE aligns shippers, carriers, manufacturers, and financiers around a single real demand signal. When the risk is shared across the whole chain instead of resting on any one player, the industry can finally move at scale."

What to watch

The near-term markers are concrete: Tesla's production ramp against the 2,500-unit commitment, the pace of truck allocation across the ten named hubs, and whether ZET SCALE converts its recruitment drive into a second RFP that moves the program toward its 10,000-truck target. Delivery schedules for RFP 1 — and the order in which carriers take up the secondary OEM options — will determine whether this demand-aggregation model becomes a template or a one-off.