TuSimple’s Autonomous Freight Network (AFN), which stretches from Arizona to Florida, is the largest of its kind in the U.S. It has been moving freight for various fleets for years as it continues to test its system so it can offer a product to fleets by the middle of the decade.

Wallace said TuSimple already has more than 6,700 reservations for the vehicle it’s building with Navistar, a self-driving International LT Series tractor expected to be available within a couple of years. 

“Right now, fleets are able to buy a purpose-built truck from Navistar that is equipped with TuSimple’s technology,” he explained. “Once you have these assets, we operate the truck for you. You tell me, for example, that you need this truck to leave on Monday at 8 a.m. and go from Phoenix to Orlando. The way it works is—you don’t have a human driver in the vehicle—you’ll pay TuSimple a per-mile fee.” 

That per-mile fee is part of a subscription program for fleets called TuSimple Path, which the company describes as a “turnkey virtual driver” that works across TuSimple’s AFN. So the fleet owns the vehicle while TuSimple operates it autonomously, essentially acting as a dispatcher with more control. 

“You’ll see better fuel economy and less wear and tear,” he added while standing beside a prototype Freightliner Cascadia equipped with Torc’s Level 4 autonomous technology. “These vehicles drive extra smooth. They don’t want to be jerky. They don’t want to be impatient.”

Culhane and Torc have been meeting with fleets as it develops that prototype truck into a work truck. “These are million-mile assets. We’re working to understand what that’s going to take from a ruggedness and reliability perspective. We’re also having those conversations with the fleets and with the dealers to discuss how we are going to service these things. We don’t want to add any more cost or operational burden. So we’re trying to make sure we do that in the smartest way possible, engaging in those conversations with the fleet very early on to ask, ‘What works operationally?”

This is all part of that full-service fleet product that autonomous trucking companies are developing for the fleets of the future—a future that is just years away. Most large truck OEMs have partnered with self-driving technology providers to offer fleets Level 4 autonomous vehicles.

Daimler didn’t just team up with Torc—the OEM acquired a majority stake in the robotics company while allowing it to develop its technology independently. “Collectively, this is Torc and Daimler because we need the hardware to go with (the technology) to create that fully-enabled self-driving truck,” Culhane said.

Culhane said that fleets who buy the product he and his team of engineers are developing among the mountains of New Mexico could be tied into a carrier’s telematics and TMS, which would be connected to Torc’s mission control. “That overall system empowers fleets to run that self-driving truck hub-to-hub or within their network,” he explained. “While it isn’t a solution to everything, it does provide that hub-to-hub, middle-mile autonomous truck.”

Technology and truck partnerships

While Culhane said this past fall that Torc and Daimler are still finalizing how they will sell their finished product to fleet customers, rival Paccar’s strategy to bring autonomy to the fleet market includes its partnership with Aurora.

The maker of Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks is building the Aurora Driver—the equipment and technology that controls the tractors—into its flagship long-haul trucks, Stephan Olsen, general manager of the Paccar Innovation Center, told FleetOwner during CES 2022.

“We don’t have a commercial product with a driver because these sensors are expensive,” he said, pointing to the lidar-, radar-, and camera-equipped on the Class 8 Peterbilt. “Having an expensive, kitted-out truck with a safety driver is not a product.”

The first fleets that will get a chance to subscribe to Aurora Horizon would likely be those operating in Texas, Tame said. “There will be a specific lane that it can operate in. And we’ve said it will go terminal-to-terminal: Autonomous all the way on the highway to short surface road driving to the terminal. And then it’ll just kind of grow from there.”

Tame said that Aurora doesn’t have subscription number goals beyond “as many as we can. There are a lot of trucks in the world. There are a lot of trucks in the U.S.

“This doesn’t, especially in the short term, replace human drivers,” Tame said. “It just kind of eats into the shortage.” And without the HOS limitations put on drivers, self-driving trucks would be ideal for long routes. “So what might happen is that the very long routes—that force drivers to be away from home all the time—get taken over by something like this. Then those people can start going to more regional driving and can get home every night. So it’s not really a replacement story. It’s sort of an implementation story.”