A Swedish company developing driverless truck technology will hire its first remote truck operators beginning next month in Sweden and later this summer in the U.S.
This story by Greg Gardner originally appeared in Forbes.
Einride, a Stockholm-based robotic cargo trucking startup, is recruiting former and current truck drivers to be trained to remotely operate multiple freight carriers. These operators will be responsible for controlling Einride’s cab-less pods safely. They will be trained in basic driving lessons and in the technology underlying the autonomous mobility of the pods.
The company plans to begin commercial operation of the pods in Sweden during the third quarter of 2020 and in the U.S. during the fourth quarter.
“Today our autonomous pods are operated by developers, specifically robot engineers trained to drive trucks,” Robert Falck, Einride’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “A commercially scalable solution must rely on truck drivers trained to remotely operate robots. The ins-and-outs of that future is what we’re investigating now by involving truck drivers in the process.”
The first nine months in Sweden and the U.S. will be a trial period during which the operators and software developers will communicate the strengths and weaknesses of the pods’ performance. That feedback will be using to recruit and train more drivers to become remote operators.
The trucking industry is still grappling with a labor shortage. A 2017 study by the American Trucking Association found that the industry needed 51,000 more drivers than were working at the time.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average age of commercial truck drivers in the U.S. is 55. Many of those drivers will retire in the next 10 to 20 years.
The BLS also projects that the number of American’s working in computer and information technology will grow by 12 percent between 2014 and 2024.
In December 2019, Einride announced a pilot program with Coca-Cola European Partners, the soft drink company’s authorized bottler and distributor for Sweden. Einride’s pods will move Coca-Cola products between the bottler’s warehouse the Stockholm suburb of Jordbro and the distribution hub of food retailer, Axfood.
Total transportation costs in the U.S. could be slashed by 30 percent if one operator controlled 10 trucks, rather than one driver handling one truck.