While manufacturers consider reshoring production and warehouse operators grapple with labor shortages, automation promises to reduce the arduous task of loading and unloading trailers. Slip Robotics has designed a mobile platform that it said can load or unload any trailer in five minutes, improving safety and efficiency.
A number of companies are addressing the challenge of autonomous loading and unloading, but Slip Robotics said its approach is unique.
“We probably have the least technically sexy approach to the problem, but it’s practical and generally applicable,” said Jordan Sanders, chief commercial officer at Slip Robotics. “Other approaches are complex and depend on a lot of technical improvements over time. For example, robotic arms work well in some scenarios, but different size boxes are a huge challenge for them.”
“We sometimes laugh at how much we’ve simplified our technical domain by unloading the entire trailer at once,” he told Automated Warehouse.
Founded in 2020, Slip Robotics said its customers across North America include John Deere, GE Appliances, Nissan, and Valeo. The Norcross, Ga.-based company offers its systems through a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model.
Slip Robotics, which won a 2024 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award for its approach to loading and unloading, raised $28 million in December.
Slip Robotics adds enhancements while maintaining simplicity
In March, Slip Robotics added the SlipBot+Rack, SlipBot+Bin, and SlipBot+Edge attachments to its platform to enable non-uniform items to be loaded onto trucks more easily.
“Instead of having the operational constraints or complexities in the trailer, we can get stuff off a truck all at once and access it from the top,” Sanders said. “Palletizing and depalletizing cells are known technologies. We’re not relying on moonshot innovation.”
“A lot of arms for palletizing use gravity when stacking boxes, but when they’re working laterally, that’s no longer to their advantage,” he explained. “Our ‘Aha’ moment was when we realized we could take bins out of a container and let existing technology work with individual parcels.”
Slip Robotics designed Slip+Rack to use the standard load bars already in containers, which is configurable from two to four levels for non-stackable freight.
“A 3PL [third-party logistics provider] might know what it’s going to be processing, and by putting it in a rack, it can double trailer capacity,” Sanders said. “Or for drywall, instead of shipping single sheets and air, we have an 8x increase in cubic space utilization.”
Market becomes educated about SlipBots, RaaS
How was the 2025 trade show season for Slip Robotics, and what sorts of companies are looking to automate trailer loading and unloading?
“MODEX of 2024 was our coming-out party,” recalled Sanders. “We had run pretty stealthily until that point. We had worked with a handful of customers and focused on getting our product ready for the market. At that show, we won Best New Product, which generated a lot of excitement.”
“At ProMat 2025, we were on everyone’s preshow agenda, as people were planning to see us,” he added. “With our latest enhancements, there’s general applicability. Other picking and loading systems only work for parcels or pristine pallets. From the beginning, our inspiration was the actual warehouse floor. The majority of our customers are moving racks, bins, and totes.”
For instance, automotive manufacturing plants are highly automated at the center, but less so at the perimeter. In warehousing, the SlipBots are often customers’ first foray into robotics, noted Sanders.
“Deploying into brownfields has been a theme for us, as folks double down on automation,” he said. “Folks are more familiar with our RaaS model now than they were five years ago.”
Slip Robotics focuses on integration, use cases
While Slip Robotics focuses on getting entire loads on and off trailers, it is talking with partners about integrating with parcel-handling and palletizing/depalletizing systems in the dock.
“It’s a matter of how many arms and the rate to build it out,” said Sanders. “When it comes to pallets, I wish there were more solutions on the market that could work really well, like automated forklifts. We’re open to it, and are doing some experimentation with our customers.”
Slip Robotics is also learning about new types of loading, such as for ULDs, or unit load devices in air freight.
“With Four Hands, a furniture distributor, we were dealing with everything from a 20 lb. lamp to a 400 lb. coffee table,” Sanders said. “Before, it had eight guys with hand dollies going into a hot Texas trailer, and it took 90 minutes. Now, the same eight people can get everything on the SlipBot and into the trailer in 20 minutes.”
“We’re finding more and more use cases like that with swarm loading and unloading,” he said. “Also, if a single trailer makes multiple stops to retail locations, we can divide the trailer into three parts. It matters less whether a part is deep in the trailer, and we’re all learning about efficiencies.”
Slip Robotics roadmap is “100% informed by customer feedback,” said Sanders. In addition to adding support for bins and racking, the company has looked at adding sensors to fill in gaps in the chain of location data.
“With SlipView, we’re streaming live data about the SlipBot, its location, battery status, and operational performance data of loading/unloading times,” he said. “Customers are also doing things like scanning inventory directly to the bot instead of scanning 10 pallets. This requires no changes to the WMS. We just make the bot a location, save scans, and have visibility into where freight is.”
Robots can enhance the quality of work
“We’re working to make this more intuitive to folks as we augment them,” Sanders said. “At one automotive supplier, a grandmother had been loading and unloading trailers, and when we deployed there, she asked us to take a video to send to her grandson so she could say she’s working in tech now.”
“Folks see really clearly that it’s not a vague story of upskilling — whether it’s a young kid or a grandmother, we’re expanding labor accessibility,” he said. “I haven’t seen a lot of things that make such an immediate change for the better in people’s day-to-day jobs.”
“It’s also about ergonomics and safety. If you look at how trailers are loaded and unloaded — every time you back out with a forklift, you’re doing so blind in cross traffic,” said Sanders. “It’s nuts to me that we’ve all accepted that that’s the way it’s done.”
While the SlipBots require some space in the loading dock, they reduce the need for staging areas, since the omnidirectional mobile robots can bring items deeper into the warehouse, Sanders said. By cutting delivery lead times, customers can hold less inventory and maximize space for production, he said.