Tractor Trailers in the New Supply Chain

Road trips can be exceptionally boring. And for kids, who haven't earned a mature perspective on time, road trips are twice as boring. Yet one of the rare highlights for seven-year-old me was passing a tractor and semi-trailer and signaling the driver to blow his air horn. Sometimes they would, many times they wouldn't, which only added to the satisfaction of the loud, piercing blare.

Yet the next generation of kids likely won't experience this. This week Daimler earned the first autonomous license for a tractor and semi-trailer in the U.S. state of Nevada. Known as the Inspiration Truck, it will be used to study the real world conditions that an autonomous truck will encounter. Inspiration will likely be the precedent for other autonomous large vehicles too, like buses and snow plows.

But Inspiration and the first wave of autonomous trucks still won't be driverless. A human operator will be in the cab and prepared to take over should the truck need some help. The truck operates through machine vision and LIDAR, and nearby autonomous trucks would be able to communicate about road conditions, and also draft behind each other for extra efficiency.

Eventually human drivers could be eliminated, allowing more space for batteries and other essentials. Trucks drivers are under constant scrutiny and must monitor their hours closely. Autonomous trucks would be able to drive non-stop, bringing suppliers and retailers just a little bit closer. Fuel and labor savings would likely translate to lower commodities prices.

What's after widespread adoption of autonomous trucks? How about mobi-factories? Instead of factories remotely producing goods and shipping them across the country, 3D printers mounted on trailers will be able to produce products in-transit. Loaded with filament or other bulk materials, nearly anything could be produced locally by mobi-factories. Even retail stores are threatened by this supply technology.

Obviously this significantly interrupts the traditional flow of a supply chain. There will be some resistance to this movement as it will also take away jobs. But attracting truck drivers has been increasingly hard, so the majority of this opposition will likely come from unionized factory workers. Eventually a compromise will be found, as disruption of this magnitude is still a decade or more away.

One thing that's clear is that the aesthetics of these trucks will change. They'll likely be sleeker and more aerodynamic. That also means certain features, such as maybe the air horn, get modern upgrades. No longer will kids be able to signal human drivers for some road trip amusement. However since I'll be the one driving, I'm totally okay with that.