Uber’s self-driving truck

Uber Freight is autonomously hauling cargo across Arizona in the United States.

The company has been moving freight since November, with its most recent trip driven for 600km by software and algorithms alone.

It’s now something of a routine for Uber, whose freight subsidiary acquired autonomous truck company Otto two years ago and hauled Budweiser 193km through Colorado in 2016.

Uber has said it expects US trucking jobs to increase by over 760,000 by 2028, claiming the trucking industry has nothing to fear, Truck and Bus

reports.

A standalone Uber Freight app also connects truckers with haulage jobs, where the ‘driver’ gets paid via Uber in the same way an Uber driver is paid using the traditional ride-hailing service.
Other brands are encroaching on the autonomous truck space with their own testing, such as Volvo, Embark, and Chinese company Tu Simple which also trialled driverless haulage in Arizona in 2017.

Seattle-based automation company Nintex says the likes of FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service who are yet to make “serious headway in terms of staffing for autonomous vehicle development…are going to be stuck behind the eight ball,” chief marketing officer Matt Fleckenstein says.