Tesla Semi Adds Paper Transport as Chicago Pilot Begins

AUSTIN, Texas — Paper Transport, a Wisconsin-based carrier that has logged more than 87 million miles running on compressed and renewable natural gas, said this week it has begun evaluating the Tesla Semi Long Range in dedicated freight operations in the Chicago market. The move makes Paper Transport the latest fleet to fold Tesla's electric Class 8 truck into daily commercial hauling, and it adds another real-world data point to a demand curve that has been steepening since the Semi reached volume production.

A pilot built on predictable routes

Paper Transport is testing the truck inside what it calls a dedicated operating model, where the same routes and consistent mileage give a battery-electric tractor its cleanest proving ground. Range and charging can be planned around a known duty cycle, which is exactly why nearly every early Semi operator has started here. Tesla's momentum in commercial transport has tracked alongside its consumer wins, and the company already leads the U.S. EV market in the first half of 2026.

PTI CEO Tyler Ellison said the partnership expands the carrier's portfolio alongside renewable natural gas and intermodal, giving customers more ways to cut Scope 3 emissions without compromising service or economics. The company's maintenance chief added that PTI is bullish on the parallels between its dedicated model and the efficiency of Tesla's fully electric tractor.

The specs behind the confidence

The Long Range Semi that Paper Transport is testing delivers 500 miles of range on a single charge, powered by an 800-kW tri-motor drivetrain rated at 1,072 horsepower. It supports 1.2-megawatt Megacharger speeds that restore roughly 60% of range in about 30 minutes. Tesla has quoted about $290,000 for the Long Range and roughly $260,000 for the 325-mile Standard Range, making it the lowest-priced Class 8 battery-electric tractor on the market. For context, California regulators pegged the average zero-emission Class 8 truck at $435,000 in 2024, which means Tesla is undercutting the field by roughly $145,000, as Electrek reported.

Production finally caught up to demand

Paper Transport's evaluation lands less than three months after Tesla rolled the first Semi off its new high-volume line at Gigafactory Nevada on April 29. The dedicated 1.7-million-square-foot building is designed for 50,000 trucks a year, and the shift from hand-building a few dozen units for PepsiCo to a real production line is what turned the Semi from a perpetual promise into something fleets can order.

The demand signals keep stacking up. In California, the Semi accounted for 965 of 1,067 applications to the state's Clean Truck and Bus Voucher program between January 2025 and February 2026, dwarfing incumbents Daimler, PACCAR and Volvo combined. Less-than-truckload carrier ArcBest bought Semis for its ABF Freight fleet after a pilot in which the truck averaged 1.55 kWh per mile, and PepsiCo now runs close to 100 trucks. Tesla is also sitting on reservations from Walmart, Sysco, Anheuser-Busch, UPS, DHL and J.B. Hunt.

Charging is the next frontier

The bottleneck now is charging, not demand. Tesla opened its first Megacharger station in Ontario, California, and has mapped 66 Megacharger locations across 15 states, part of the same infrastructure push driving its record energy-storage business. A Chicago-market operation like Paper Transport's will need that network to expand eastward before an evaluation becomes a fleet order, but the direction is unmistakable: as more carriers run the total-cost-of-ownership math, electric freight is winning it.