Autonomous trucking company from California hauling IKEA products in Texas, causing concerns among drivers – Houston Public Media

AP Photo/Peter Morrison, File

A self-driving trucking company that has been hauling IKEA products throughout Texas says its know-how goals to enhance working situations for human drivers in addition to their high quality of life.

But in keeping with the founding father of a Houston-area group that represents the pursuits of drivers and the trucking {industry} in common, autonomous supply is a risk to their livelihood.

California-based Kodiak Robotics introduced final week that its self-driving 18-wheelers started hauling products from IKEA, the Swedish dwelling furnishings retailer, on Aug. 8. Deliveries have been made seven days per week from the IKEA Distribution Center in Baytown to the IKEA retailer in Frisco, outdoors of Dallas, in keeping with a news launch from Kodiak, which mentioned human truck drivers decide up loaded trailers after which sit behind the wheel to supervise the autonomous supply.

Still, the initiative is worrisome for the 150-plus trucking corporations, drivers and different industry-related personnel who’re members of the Greater Houston Trucking Association (GHTA).

“We at the GHTA are opposed to self-driving trucks for the following reasons: loss of jobs and depression of wages,” mentioned Liz Castillo, the founder and president of the group. “Since 1980, the earnings of truckers have been going down. This is why we have a shortage of drivers.”

Kodiak Robotics, a startup from the San Jose suburb of Mountain View, California, mentioned it made its first autonomous freight supply in 2019 between Houston and Dallas. It has since made deliveries between the Dallas space and the Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio together with Atlanta, Oklahoma City and two cities in Florida.

The company mentioned in a news launch that the aim of its partnership with IKEA is to “get a better understanding of how Kodiak’s autonomous driving technology contributes to increased road safety and better working conditions for truck drivers on the longer distances.”

“Together we can enhance safety, improve working conditions for drivers and create a more sustainable freight transportation system,” Kodiak founder and CEO Don Burnette mentioned in the news launch. “Adopting autonomous trucking technology can improve drivers’ quality of life by focusing on the local driving jobs most prefer to do.”

But in keeping with a March study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University, as much as 94 % of trucker operator hours could also be impacted “if automated trucking technology improves to operate in all weather conditions across the continental United States.” The examine additionally discovered that the lack of operator hours related to the automation of long-haul trucking – journeys of 150 miles or longer – would “not be made up both in terms of quantity and quality by short-haul driving work.”

“We found that an increase in short-haul operation is unlikely to compensate for the loss in long-haul operator hours, despite public claims to this effect by the developers of the technology,” examine co-author Parth Vaishnav wrote in his report.

Castillo mentioned cash invested in autonomous trucking know-how could be higher spent on wages for human drivers, which she mentioned would assist alleviate driver shortages and scale back the demand for automation. She additionally mentioned she is anxious in regards to the security of self-driving 18-wheelers, though Kodiak and IKEA each touted improved highway security as one of many objectives of their partnership.

A spokesperson for Kodiak wrote in an e-mail that the company has “earned an extremely strong safety record since it began operating on public roads in 2019,” including that one in all its vehicles in August was rear-ended by the driving force of a pickup truck on Interstate 45 south of Dallas. The spokesperson mentioned nobody was damage in the collision, which prompted “only minor property damage to both vehicles.”

“Although the technology has improved, especially here in Texas, is it full-proof?” Castillo mentioned. “Even me as consumer, being on the road with a self-driving truck, it’s a little scary.”