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Sundt Counts 65,000 Cubic Yards Loaded by Bedrock Autonomous Excavators on 130-Acre Job
Bedrock and Sundt put counted yardage on supervised autonomous truck loading. The figures date to 18 Nov and 12 Dec 2025 and are the only production numbers in print as of a 2 Sep 2026 Bedrock post.
On 2 September 2026 Bedrock Robotics posted on X that truck loading is "the cycle that repeats all day, every day," called it the right place for autonomy to take on work first, and pointed to Dan Green, a Sundt Construction project manager, as the person describing what that opens up for his crew. The post carries no new numbers. The counted figures behind it are older. As of Bedrock's 18 November 2025 release and an ENR report on 12 December 2025, Bedrock's systems had loaded more than 65,000 cubic yards of earth and rock into human-driven articulated dump trucks on Sundt's site preparation job for a 130-acre manufacturing facility in the Southwest. Green told ENR the job plans to move about 700,000 cubic yards in total, and that the Bedrock excavators were about 10 percent of utilization on the site.
Those are the only production numbers that any source we read has published. The 65,000-yard count is Bedrock's figure, repeated by Sundt in the same release, and neither company has said who counted it or over what dates. The 700,000-yard plan and the 10 percent utilization figure come from Green through ENR. None of the sources publishes cycle times, trucks per hour, yards per hour, downtime, or cost per yard. ENR describes the site as a 130-acre manufacturing facility supporting domestic energy production. Equipment World, in a 3 December 2025 story, places it in Phoenix, Arizona. No source names the owner or the plant. This magazine covered Bedrock's August 2026 empty-cab announcement separately and noted then that production rates were unpublished.
Photo by Troy Mortier on Unsplash. Stock fallback after site generate_article_image VARIANT_FAILED.
The yardage as the sources count it
Bedrock's 18 November 2025 release says its autonomous systems had "so far moved over 65,000 cubic yards" on the Sundt project by loading human-operated articulating dump trucks with the same workflow used in manual operations. The Robot Report carried the same figure on 20 November and converted it to about 49,700 cubic meters. Equipment World repeated it on 3 December, and ENR's Jeff Yoders reported "more than 65,000 cu yd of earth and rock" on 12 December. All four sources trace back to the same company count, so the number has one origin, not four.
2 September 2026. Newest dated statement on the Sundt relationship and truck loading. Company statement. Contains no yardage, hours, or dates; the 'twenty years' line is a general example, not a specific operator.
12 December 2025. Supports the 65,000 cu yd count, the truck-loading workflow, the 20 to 80 ton range, the 130-acre Southwest domestic-energy description, and Dan Green's quotes on 700,000 cu yd planned, 10 percent utilization, and operators teaching the system.
18 November 2025. Origin of the 65,000 cu yd figure, the 'supervised autonomy' label, the same-workflow-as-manual claim, the 20 to 80 ton range, Green's retention quotes, and the Proto-Town Texas deployment. Company release, unaudited.
20 November 2025. Repeats the 65,000 cu yd figure with a metric conversion, describes the Bedrock Operator controller, gives the 2024 founding and November 2024 first-site timeline, and carries Boris Sofman's quotes on learning from operators.
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Sundt Counts 65,000 Cubic Yards Loaded by Bedrock Autonomous Excavators on 130-Acre Job | ConstructionMagazine.ai
The planned total comes from Green. He told ENR the project would move about 700,000 cubic yards of rock and earth, adding, "That's the scale of what we're moving." Against that plan, the 65,000 yards reported in late 2025 works out to a little under a tenth of the job, by our arithmetic on the published figures. That share lines up with Green's own description of the machines' place on the site. Bedrock excavators, he said, "are about 10% of our utilization out there." ENR does not define utilization, so the reader cannot tell whether Green meant machine hours, share of the excavator fleet, or share of yardage moved. The two numbers are consistent with each other, but they are not the same measurement.
Yardage moved by Bedrock vs planned total (cy), Bedrock 18 Nov 2025 and Green via ENR 12 Dec 2025; ~10% utilization
They're a tool in a much larger toolbox that we have on this. - Dan Green, senior project manager, Sundt Construction, ENR, 12 December 2025
How the truck-loading cycle runs
The workflow as ENR describes it is the ordinary mass-excavation loop. A human-driven articulated dump truck pulls up and positions itself to be loaded. The excavator, running Bedrock's system, scoops from a stripped pile and fills the bed. The truck pulls away and the next one positions. Bedrock's release stresses that this is the same workflow used in manual operations. The trucks, the haul roads, the pile, and the dump site did not change to accommodate the machine. ENR reports the technology installed across excavator models from 20 to 80 tons on the site.
The release calls this supervised autonomy testing, and Equipment World describes it as the largest known supervised autonomy deployment for mass excavation. None of the sources for this job says whether an operator sat in the cab during the counted yardage, and this article does not claim the cab was empty. The August 2026 empty-cab announcement is a separate claim. Equipment World describes the hardware as a square rack on top of the cab carrying LiDAR, GPS, inertial measurement units, and eight high-definition cameras, with an in-cab computer for processing. The outlet says the kit installs within a few hours with no permanent modification to the machine. The Robot Report identifies the software as the Bedrock Operator, an AI controller trained to run the excavator.
Autonomous truck-loading cycle as ENR and the Bedrock release describe it, Nov and Dec 2025
1Human-driven articulated dump truck pulls up and positions to be loaded
→
2Excavator running Bedrock's system scoops from the stripped pile
→
3Excavator swings and loads the truck bed
→
4Loaded truck pulls away to the dump site
→
5Next truck positions and the cycle repeats
Why Sundt put the repetitive cycle first
Green's stated reason is retention, not headcount. In the November release he said the larger problem Sundt faces is keeping experienced operators engaged when the job needs them for months of repetitive earthmoving in remote locations. That is a paraphrase; his next two sentences are quoted below. The argument is that mass excavation is the work experienced operators least want, and that a machine handling the loading cycle frees them for work that needs judgment.
Our best operators aren't interested in the monotony of mass excavation work. With Bedrock's technology handling the repetitive truck loading that goes on day after day, our skilled workforce can focus on more specialized and creative problems where their expertise is critical to success. - Dan Green, project manager, Sundt Construction, Bedrock release via PR Newswire, 18 November 2025
The 2 September 2026 X post restates the same case in Bedrock's words. Truck loading "rewards consistency over judgment," the company wrote. The post's line about "an operator with twenty years on a machine" is a general example of the kind of judgment loading trucks does not ask for. It does not describe a specific Sundt operator, and no source names one. Bedrock also credits Sundt's teams with bringing the company onto active sites and being direct about what holds up in the field. It reports no yardage, no hours, and no dates, and it should be read as the newest dated confirmation that the relationship continues, not as a production update.
How the system learned from Sundt's operators
Green told ENR that Sundt's role went beyond hosting the machines. Experienced operators taught the system how a human does the loading task, and more than one operator contributed. The result, in his description, consolidates the knowledge of several people into a single operator, which he called "very powerful." Bedrock chief executive Boris Sofman gave The Robot Report the company side of the same idea on 20 November 2025. He said the company did not have engineers writing software to explain how to operate the machine. Instead it collected large amounts of data and is "effectively learning from how to emulate the best operators." The Robot Report also reports Bedrock was founded in 2024 and was testing autonomy on a real site by November 2024, about a year before the Sundt count.
We've taken very experienced operators and they're teaching how a human does that task by using multiple operators. You're kind of taking that consolidated knowledge of multiple operators and turning it into one operator, and that's very powerful. - Dan Green, senior project manager, Sundt Construction, ENR, 12 December 2025
What the numbers leave out
A count of yards moved is a total, not a rate. Nothing in the four sources says how many machine hours produced the 65,000 yards, how many trucks were loaded, what the average cycle took, or how often a supervisor had to step in. Without hours, the figure cannot be turned into yards per hour or compared with a manual crew. Without a start date, the reader cannot tell whether 65,000 yards represents weeks or months of loading. The release's phrase is "so far," and ENR's report three and a half weeks later repeats the same number, which suggests either the count was not updated between the two stories or the machines moved little in the interval.
The gap since then is longer. Nine months passed between ENR's December 2025 story and Bedrock's September 2026 post, and no source we read updated the Sundt count in that window. Bedrock's August 2026 announcements, covered in this magazine's earlier story, described paid work with nobody in the cab across three contractors, but did not publish rates either. The 700,000-yard plan means roughly 635,000 yards remained after the December count. Who moved the rest, and whether the Bedrock share of the work rose above the 10 percent Green described, is the question the next dated figure will have to answer.
What to ask before you put an autonomous excavator on a truck-loading cycle
The Sundt figures give a contractor a template for the questions a vendor should be able to answer on any mass-excavation pilot. The ones the published record leaves open are the ones to press on.
Who counted the yardage, over what dates, and by what method: scale tickets, truck counts, drone survey, or the machine's own bucket estimate.
What the utilization figure measures: machine hours against the excavator fleet, share of the cut, or something else, and who calculated it.
Who sits in the cab or at the console while the machine loads, what the supervisor-to-machine ratio is, and how often the supervisor takes over.
What happens to the cycle when a truck spots short, the pile face changes, or rock shows up where the model expected dirt.
How the roof rack, cabling, and in-cab computer affect the machine's warranty, the rental agreement, and the OEM telematics subscription.
Whose operators trained the model, whether the contractor keeps rights to that data, and whether it transfers to a competitor's job.
What the plan is for the other 90 percent of the excavation, and what would have to be true for the autonomous share to grow.
Green's own framing is the right yardstick. He called the machines a tool in a much larger toolbox and put them at a tenth of the site's utilization. A vendor that describes a pilot in those terms, with a dated count and a plan number next to it, has given the contractor something to check. A vendor that describes it as a leap forward without either has not.
3 December 2025, updated 9 December 2025. Places the 130-acre site in Phoenix, Arizona, calls it the largest known supervised autonomy deployment for mass excavation, and describes the roof-rack sensor kit (LiDAR, GPS, IMUs, eight HD cameras, in-cab computer) and the few-hours install with no permanent modification.
Published Aug/Sep 2026. Prior coverage of Bedrock's August 2026 empty-cab announcement; noted production rates were unpublished. Referenced as context only, not retold.