When fully automated, legal and truly driverless trucks are a functionality reality, who needs trucking companies, truck drivers, even traditional truck makers anymore?
Essentially, that was the question posed by flatbedder Jordan Carriers Vice President Doug Jordan during a panel discussion covering wide ground at FTR Transportation Intelligence's conference a month ago in Indianapolis.
Recent driverless/autonomous trucking developments might underscore the implied point.
- The Kodiak company trumpeted its partnership with shipper Ikea to move freight in trucks without a driver along Texas lanes before the year's out, principally I-45.
- Daimler's CEO estimated a 2027 date by which she expected its Torc Robotics company to hit driver-out phase.
- Kodiak's planned Ikea lane is one among those Aurora's operating on in Texas, with other freight moving to Arizona and back, with a trucking-as-a-service model in place with other trucking companies.
Wisconsin-headquartered Roehl Transport announced in May it'd be working with Kodiak for OTR service and validation. 2,000-truck Hirschbach Motor Lines has 12 units on with Aurora, said Andrew Hadland, Hirschbach CFO, during the FTR panel discussion
Hadland described the autonomous truck reality as the first innings of a baseball game. "We're getting to learn about it," he said, "what the benefits and applications will be."
There's still "lots of testing" happening "with these trucks," he said, the partnership with Aurora seeing Hirschbach running those 12 units in Texas, some in Arizona.
Biggest benefits so far, he felt, were on the safety front. "They've proven to be exponentially safer than [a truck] with a human driver in it," he said, even now at night, in rain, with foggy conditions even. Yet still he felt it was very early in the game for driverless deployment at scale, where a lot will depend on state and/or possible federal regulation.
States, fed executive branch clearing robots' paths
Texas and Arizona's allowance for removal of the safety driver certainly "changes the economics of it," Hadland said, speculating ultimate application of driverless operations at Hirschbach might be in "really long-haul lanes," where the driver is "away from the house for a long time, ... a complementary fit with the challenges of recruiting drivers."
[Related: DOT clearing way for driverless trucks with wiper, mirror, steering exemptions]
Doug Jordan, though, wondered at the willingness of so many to join in the testing of autonomous trucks.
He spoke directly to Hadland when the moderator pitched a question his way, then. "I appreciate you helping them out," he said, not exactly sincerely, eliciting a few chuckles back in the hall at FTR's conference.
"When the driverless truck comes out" in full force, "we’re all out of business," Jordan added. Only the Amazons of world, the "powerhouses on Wall Street, have enough money to go create" what Jordan felt could be akin to a "railroad system for trucks" should driverless trucking truly scale, or be allowed to scale by the general public.
Truckload carriers' core competencies today, the real value they bring to shippers, he and others noted, is bringing the human element to the goods-movement table. "All we really do is manage a supply of labor," Jordan sad. "Anybody can get a truck or trailer. Everybody in this room can do it."
Yet sounding much like a longtime professional driver talking about their own unique skillset, Jordan added that it "takes a special person to be able to handle those people" doing the work.
Driverless trucks at scale might never hit truly specialized and/or permitted loads, including some of Jordan's company's 900 trucks' work in heavy haul, he acknowledged. Yet he also predicted that there would be such a supply of drivers willing to do that work that "there won't be any money in it" any longer.
Truck makers, dealers, the entire infrastructure of work around trucking, too, could be under threat, in his view. He referenced a fishing trip with the CEO of one of the big truck makers. "You're helping these guys out with those trucks" in testing, partnering on development, Jordan recalled telling that CEO, yet "when that gets done, your job's gone."
For those aforementioned "Wall Street powerhouses," in Jordan's view, truck-maker "money is nothing to them."
[Related: International begins autonomous customer fleet trials]
Trucking as we know it hangs in the balance.
Many among drivers and owner-operators see the dynamics similarly.
Hirschbach's Hadland noted "we took a lot of calls" from the compay's own drivers when involvement in Aurora's commercial rollout was announced. Those drivers' response was not exactly one of "excitement."
Public driverless acceptance a ways out
For now, all panelists suggested, the general public seems at one with truck drivers who fear driverless prospects.
From the shipper side, joining Jordan and Hadland on the panel was a representative from the supply chain network of The Home Depot, who quibbled a bit with Hadland's "first innings" assessment when it comes to the technology itself. Later innings of the game might be a more apt metaphor there.
The trucks and all their sensors and assist technology are getting to where they work, fundamentally.
Jordan, even, concurred in a way on autonomous safety factors, yet kept his remarks in the future tense: "It will definitely be safer," he said. "AI pays attention 100% of the time."
But public acceptance of the prospect of sharing the roads with more and more and more 80,000-lb. robots could be a long time coming.
Real acceptance by shippers of size, The Home Depot rep suggested, wouldn't follow until that happens, the recent PR from furniture retailer Ikea and Kodiak notwithstanding.
[Related: When will owner-operators have to compete with driverless fleets?]
Regulators in this Trump administration want to clear the path for it all. The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's piece of the semi-annual regulatory agenda featured a measure of detail on plans for wiper, mirror, steering exemptions for fully automated trucks.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's already cleared the way for driverless developers' ongoing on-highway experiments in at least one way, extending a waiver of safety-triangles regulation granted to Aurora to any developer who simply opts into it.
As previously reported, cargo van operator Kostas Giannoulias charges the FMCSA acted outside the bounds of rules on waivers/exemptions. FMCSA has mounted a vigorous defense of itself in court filings, but if successful, Kostas' principal ask of the 7th Circuit federal appeals court is for a stay of the waiver.
An automated truck can't put out safety triangles in a distress situation by itself, that's sure.
Read Matt Cole's reporting on Giannoulias's petition as well as FMCSA's defense via those links.
Success of Giannoulias' challenge could mean a step toward the outcome South Carolina trucker Jonathan Wood memorably asked Congress to mandate in June, namely ensuring human drivers stay at the controls of autonomous trucks.
[Related: Trucker to Congress: Keep drivers in autonomous trucks]
As Overdrive reported, Wood's letter to Congress urged lawmakers to “slow down and put safety and workers first,” as he put it. “I am not asking them to ban technology. I am asking them to not hand over the future of trucking without proof, accountability, and protection for the people who built the industry.”
However drivers' pushback efforts with Congress and courts turn out, Hirschbach's Hadland felt public fear of automated 80,000-lb. robots will dissipate. It could be a long time coming, though, generational on the time scale.
For many people, it's certainly "disconcerting today" to see a tractor-trailer with no driver at the wheel, he noted. "Whether or not that might change over generations," it "certainly will be slow adoption."
Yet "when you can have a truck with no hours-of-service regulation," he added, "there's efficiency and value there. Over time, the market will work it out."
Driverless trucks, he said, "inevitably," will "find an application."
[Related: Will HOS regs apply for the in-cab observer on Aurora's 1K-mile 'driverless' lane?]
