Autonomous trucks can work beside human drivers in an active terminal. The condition is not a separate autonomous lane. It is a shared operating model: one dispatching authority, visible vehicle intent, site-specific traffic rules and a tested process for recovering tasks when the plan changes. That distinction becomes clear the moment a normal shift stops being normal. A lane closes around a quay-crane hand-off. A manually driven tractor arrives late. An autonomous truck pauses after detecting an obstacle. Containers still need to reach the next operation, and the dispatcher must decide which task moves, waits or changes route. Mixed-fleet operations succeed when that decision is made through agreed rules rather than radio calls and improvisation. This is how Westwell approaches mixed traffic in live terminals: autonomous driving handles repeatable, coordination-heavy transport work, while human drivers remain part of the operating model. The objective is not to remove people from the terminal. It is to give people, vehicles and systems a predictable way to work through change.

An autonomous baggage tractor can complete a defined towing task. Airport-scale automation requires a different test: can the operation reassign baggage and cargo work when an aircraft arrives late, a stand changes, a route closes or a vehicle becomes unavailable?

For a global operator, the challenge is not proving that an autonomous vehicle can move. It is building an autonomous logistics model that can be repeated across sites without forcing every terminal, airport or factory into the same process. A route that works in one port may fail under another terminal's traffic rules. An airport may need automated coupling and flight-driven dispatch. A factory will judge the same technology by whether production continues when orders change.