I’ll have much more coming from FTR’s Transportation Conference in Indianapolis this week, where speakers have talked the overall economy, freight economy, capacity, regulatory outlook, truck orders and more, but here are a few interesting comments from speakers that have caught my ear.
Check out all the coverage so far from FTR’s Transportation Conference by clicking here.
Driver surplus?
No matter your thoughts on whether autonomous vehicles will stick, increasing vehicle automation is a trend that’s not going away. And if the current trend of automation continues, there could actually be a driver surplus — yes, surplus — sometime in the 2020s, said FTR’s Noel Perry.
Or maybe not:
Werner President and COO Derek Leathers said he sees the recent interest of late in autonomous vehicles as an “arms race” by the OEMs. He compared truck makers’ quest to become the first to introduce a highway-legal automated truck to the race by superpower countries to be the first to the moon in the 1960s.
He doesn’t foresee a completely driverless truck rolling down the highway in our generation, he says.
