It's hard to know exactly where things stand with self-driving trucks., and whether they are just years away from reality or unlikely to be on the roads for decades. However, recent trends seem to point more towards the former scenario than the latter.
For example, in August ride sharing giant Uber announced it was acquiring OTTO, a developer of self-driving truck technology that was founded by former members of Google's self-driving car team, putting plenty of capital available for research and development on the concept potentially available.
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With its broad and growing fulfilment and sortation center networks, Amazon just might be able to pick up high density routes using its own trucks.
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What's more, the Obama administration just recently put its weight behind automated driving, for the first time releasing federal guidelines for the systems. Those rules are addition to about a dozen states that have already created laws that allow for the testing of self-driving vehicles.
Ultimately, however, the federal government will set the rules on US highways through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Having self-driving trucks navigate actual deliveries over city streets may face a number of hurdles, but simply driving a long-haul rig hundreds of miles down the highway would seem a much lower obstacle to overcome.
"It's really silly to have a person steering a truck for eight hours just to keep it between two lines on the highway," OTTO founder Anthony Levandowski is fond of saying.
That view would certainly seem to make some sense, potentially putting the jobs of hundreds of thousands of today's truck drivers ultimately in jeopardy - ironically in a period where the driver shortage continues to be a major issue for the logistics sector.
"At risk is one of the most common jobs in many states, and one of the last remaining careers that offer middle-class pay to those without a college degree," recently noted the Los Angeles Times.
There are 1.7 million trucker drivers of all kinds in America today. The move to self-driving trucks, the LA Times says, would be the first time that machines take direct aim at an entire class of blue-collar work in America.
Jerry Kaplan, a Stanford lecturer and the author of the book "Humans Need Not Apply," says that truck driving is an easy target for automation because "There isn't much judgment involved and it's a fairly controlled environment.
"If you can get rid of the drivers, those people are out of jobs, but the cost of moving all those goods goes down significantly," Kaplan also noted.
Testing for self-driving trucks has been well underway. For the last several months, at least one Volvo truck equipped with the OTTO software, cameras and sensors has been test self-driving, with a person at the wheel, on Interstate 280 or on the 101 Freeway in California.
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Lior Ron, another OTTO co-founder, says that as the system gathers data on tens of thousands of miles of US highways, having the driver asleep in the back could become a possibility within the next few years. That would instantly double the amount of time a truck spends on the road per day, allowing freight companies to charge more for shorter delivery times.
"The truck can now move 24/7," Ron says.
Platooning is Very Close to Reality
The concept of platooning, where two or three trucks travel in tandem, with the trailing trucks in effect having their movements controlled by the lead truck, could be here very soon.
Successful tests have already occurred in the US and Europe, and while those tests had drivers in each truck, there were significant advantages in terms of fuel costs from being able to reduce the distance between vehicles and more optimally controlling speed and braking. The tests have shown susing as much as a 7% reduction in diesel fuel consumption. (See Successful Test of Truck Platooning in Europe Likely to Move Technology  Forward.)
Peloton, a California-based company with systems to manage the Platoons, has begun taking reservations for its technology from freight fleets, and says it plans to start delivering them "in volume" within a year.
In fact, platoons could be the first application for deployment of self-driving trucks, with a driver in the lead vehicle and self-driving trucks following behind. In this arrangement, the self-driving trucks aren't really on their own, but rather part of a truck group moving down the highway, connected electronically to a lead vehicle that has a driver.
"As we move to higher levels of automation, we can save them massive amounts in labor costs," Peloton's Josh Switkes told the LA Times.
Even before that happens, though, platooning could segregate drivers into different pay classes depending on whether they are driving the first or trailing rigs.
However, one truck driver the newspaper spoke with pushed back on the idea he might soon be out of a job.
"You need a human being to deal with some of the problems we have out on the road," the driver said, adding that there are too many delicate maneuvers involved, too many tricks and turns and unforeseen circumstances to hand the wheel over to technology.
While that likely is true in terms of say getting in and out of the Port of Los Angeles, is it also true for just cruising down the highway, in a lane perhaps dedicated to self-driving trucks?
That seems a whole different question.
Do you think self-driving trucks will be here any time soon? Are platoons going to come fast - and be the first way to deploy autonomous trucks in the railing rigs? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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