They are very real—“they” being autonomous trucks.

I was recently at Manifest, a show that says it brings together the most comprehensive ecosystem of innovation and transformation in logistics technology and end-to-end supply chain. I can’t say for sure whether that’s true, but I can tell you that the exhibit hall featured a large portion of the autonomous trucks in existence today. That included offerings from Einride, Plus, Locomation, Embark, Kodiak, TuSimple, and Gatik. Other companies like Graham, Doorley, and Solo had people at the show but did not have trucks on display.

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All the autonomous vehicles I saw had varying degrees of radar and video capability in mirrors, on the top of their cabs, and on the front and sides of the trucks, too.

It was very cool to be able to walk up to the trucks and talk with the people staffing the booths about what systems they are using and why.

I was impressed with how far along in the development process these companies are. I know a lot of people are skeptical about the viability of autonomous trucks, and I admit we have a fairly long way to go before we see fully autonomous trucks running down many of our highways and roads. However, I think we are now well past the stage of maybe this will happen, evidenced by the fact that these trucks are hauling real freight on corridors in the Southwest. Right now.

As with any new technology, there are lots of issues to be worked out. But many of the advanced driver assistance systems that are already in widespread use on today’s trucks are the building blocks for these higher levels of automation.

I think autonomous trucking is another one of those times, like electric vehicles, when the best minds in trucking and the best minds in the technology space are coming together to develop a new kind of truck, a new kind of logistics. And just as electric trucks today are not suitable for every application, autonomous trucks will not be right for every application when they become commercially available. But they will make sense in some applications, and since the trucking industry typically does things that make sense, I see autonomous trucks in our future.