Self-driving truck

And it's kind of interesting because...

One guy, they're like, well, you know, it's a good thing because they didn't recognize it until the autonomous trucks needed a solution.

This is better.

Now they're saying it's better for truckers that they get this too, but I don't think truckers have it yet.

Which brings us to the tech side.

The FMCSA just gave a five-year exemption to level four autonomous trucks.

They can now use cab mounted flashing amber beacons instead of putting out those manual warning triangles.

Oh, great.

To help speed up the deployment of autonomous commercial trucks, the US Department of Transportation just approved a five-year exemption for Aurora and other self-driving truck companies, which covers rules that require drivers to place reflective triangles around a stopped truck.

The warning devices are placed outside of a truck to help prevent crashes.

But since autonomous trucks don't have drivers, companies had been seeking an exemption.

Now companies are allowed to mount warning beacons on the cab to provide warnings to other drivers.

Companies planning to use the exemption must notify the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and disclose any crashes when the beacons are activated or should have been activated.

I want to get your thoughts on this new phenomenon of autonomous, AI, agentic AI, the software companies out there.

But really, my big focus is autonomous trucks.

So the FMCSA is poised to grant a waiver for these cones so that a truck can continue driving.

If it breaks down, they can use a beacon.

The recipe seems to be autonomous trucks are coming.

What does TIA think about this potential future? And what should brokers and motorcars and chippers be thinking about when it comes to a truck showing up with no driver inside of it? And maybe there's a remote operator, but this brave new world, what can we expect? And what do you think about that?

Yeah, we had our conference, God, was it four years, three or four years ago out in California.

So when the beacon waiver for the extension for five years was being asked, there was less than 50 people or companies or associations that commented.

All right, we'll get to some of the other industry headlines.

Another day, another update on autonomous trucks.

More to be sharing the roads with us.

The latest from the autonomous trucking technology company known as Kodiak announced the next steps to in a years-long partnership with the furniture giant IKEA.

This is part of the established 292-mile delivery route connecting the IKEA distribution center in Baytown with the IKEA store in Frisco.

They tell us Kodiak and IKEA have been working towards driverless operations for four years now.

As part of the partnership between the two companies, Kodiak's Autonomous Trucks have now delivered, they say, more than 1,300 loads, traveled over 750,000 miles, while autonomously carrying IKEA goods, but there has been a safety observer on board to date.

Kodiak says their autonomous truck technology has delivered IKEA freight along the I-45 route safely for four years now.

I'm saying if you're the broker that's out there doing this stuff and you haven't pitted, you better because you're done.

The broker, as we know it, is dead.

absolutely 60 seconds with this last one let's go to aurora real quick because we saw this from thomas watson i thought it was a fantastic read wanted to get your thoughts right all right so aurora innovation is planning to run more than 30 000 driverless trucks by 2030 the company told analysts and investors at its analyst and investor day out in dallas last week all right so the plan calls for more than 5 billion in revenue that year and a target gross margin of about 60 percent according to the company's Investor Day presentation.

So they're fully allocated to exit 2026 with 200 driverless trucks in operation, which CFO David Madej said would represent an $80 million revenue run rate.

The company said Aurora Driver has logged more than 500,000 driverless miles since commercial launch.

I guess my question for you is that, is this... going to happen? Do you think, Mike, knowing what you know, being obviously connected to the industry, and I know how you feel about innovation and driverless, I think conceptually it sounds great, but from an execution standpoint, do you think that they got the horses to get this done?

But the.

Autonomous trucks, there's a lot of hype around them.

A lot of it's true, a lot of it's false.

The hype around how cool they are and how good they are and what they can do and how efficient they can be and the things that they can do isn't hype enough.

Absolutely.

From top down.

Talking about autonomous trucks, Aurora is running driverless freight out of Fort Worth.

And Alvis TMS has an integration with Aurora, and we're trying to help for those companies that are more interested in using autonomous trucks to allow that integration for things to flow more freely.

And top of the list is what our group company Torque is doing in the US.

They are fully focused on putting level four autonomous trucks.

We are aiming to deploy level four autonomous trucks hub to hub.

which is mainly on the highways, right? Our large fleets would have their warehouses close to the highways and we want to fully autonomous trucks going from one warehouse to the other.

It is still a massive challenge.

We're making good progress, but that's certainly the aim.