Peloton Technology, a connected and automated vehicle technology company, has applauded Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s signing of S.B. 995 into law. The legislation authorizes electronically coordinated truck platooning on Michigan roads by creating an exception to the state’s required minimum following distance for commercial vehicles of 500 feet.
Every good that you buy has to make its way from the manufacturer to you, and of all modes of transportation trucking is by far the most important. In fact, a staggering 80% of all cargo in America is transported by the trucking industry, four times as much as air (8%), pipeline (6%), rail (4%), and water (2%) combined.
Nikola Motor Company has gotten a lot of attention for its hydrogen-powered trucks. And it should: Hydrogen fuel cells make the trucks environmentally friendly, more powerful than diesel-reliant vehicles, and safer than their predecessors.
In one of the few things they agree on, both Donald J.Trump and Hillary Clinton have said they would spend billions more on America’s aging roads, bridges, hospitals, schools and public transportation systems.
Mobile application-based ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft have revolutionized the urban taxi landscape in the past few years. Now, the idea of doing something similar to fill out trucks to full capacity is catching fire.
Trucks moved more freight in August, a pair of indexes showed, though not all fleets took part in the rebound. The American Trucking Associations’ seasonally-adjusted truck tonnage index rose 5.7% in August from a month earlier to 141.8, just below a record set in February. The report follows DAT’s estimate last week of an 11% year-on-year increase in North American truck volumes in August.
The trucking industry is on the precipice of 10 to 20 years of change unlike it’s ever experienced, says transportation economist Noël Perry, and carriers who want to survive these changes must be prepared for them, he said. “The last major change we had was deregulation,” he said. “And it had only a fraction of the power of this one. It eliminated almost all of the carriers in business at the time. A few came through, but not many. This change is even larger.”
The docks at the Port of Oakland are a tangle of cranes, shipping containers, railroad tracks and snaking lines of trucks waiting to load and unload cargo. Streamlining this kind of traffic is one of the few ideas Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton agree on.
While many technologies will likely play a role in shaping the future of transportation, two of the most important will be the emergence of automated driving systems and the continuing evolution of data analytics. Prime examples of those two trends were on display at a pair of technology demonstrations in recent months.
US trucking companies kept their hiring engines firing in August, adding 3,400 jobs, an increase of 1,500 jobs over the 1,900 gain now reported for July, US Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday show. August was the second month of job gains in trucking after a five-month decline in employment, a sign US motor carriers are preparing for a busier fall shipping season.
We’ve all been there. Running late and seeing the cars in front of us slow down, or perhaps on the highway headed out on vacation and turning off the cruise control because the red brake lights of traffic are shining bright. We credit our misfortune to an 18-wheeler up ahead, who is keeping it just under the posted speed limit or is trying to make a sweeping right turn. This truck is big – which can be intimidating – but more to the point, it is slowing you down by a few seconds and keeping you from your destination. Taking a moment to roll down your window to say “Thank you,” to the driver probably isn’t the first thing on your mind, but perhaps it should be.