Autonomous trucking future ‘is almost upon us’ says Uber Freight head

There is an ongoing truck driver shortage and Uber Freight believes they have the answers. In a report released earlier this month, the unit, which is Uber’s trucking logistics and supply chain management offering, stated that autonomous trucking is the key to solving the driver shortage crisis, not because the industry will no longer require drivers, but because they will be doing so in a different way with autonomous trucking.

“We’re getting ready for that future with drivers that will be available on both sides of the autonomous freight, available to pick up and drop off the freight that is being hauled by the autonomous truck by providing a network of drop trails on both ends that will allow for that move to happen,” said Lior Ron, the head of Uber Freight in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live.

Uber has a vision for a hub-to-hub system that is made up of a hybrid of human workers and autonomous trucks. “Hub-to-hub essentially means that you only do the autonomous freight between a hub off the highway, close to the origin of the load, and a hub close to the destination of the load,” Ron said. “In between, the autonomous freight can run on the highway in a very predictable, very repeatable way.” Click here to see how autonomous trucking is on the rise.