Given the far-reaching and potentially disruptive effects the autonomous movement of goods will have on the trucking industry, the North American Council for Freight Efficiency has begun exploring the subject of autonomous trucking, publishing a series of articles on its website under the banner NACFE’s Perspective on Autonomous Trucking.

Departing from its usual approach to subjects via Confidence Reports and Guidance Reports, NACFE said, it is presenting thought leadership pieces to open a dialogue with the industry on autonomous trucking. Confidence Reports are designed to help scale existing technology and Guidance Reports focus on emerging technologies.

“When it comes to autonomous trucking, we are in the nascent stages of its development, and there is not enough data for us to issue a Guidance Report,” said Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director. “Although as we see the technology develop, we will engage a study team and explore the topic in-depth.”

In 2016, NACFE published a Confidence Report on Two-Truck Platooning, which is a technology along the pathway to fully autonomous trucking. The group expects to update this report in early 2021.

With the help of trucking journalist and freight futurist Jack Roberts, NACFE has compiled a series of brief papers on various aspects of autonomous trucking. The site update launched with three such papers:

• The Age of Automated Logistics Arises

• The Five Forces Driving Disruption in Trucking Today

• Distribution Yards — An Early Autonomous Test Bed

Content will be added to the web page on a regular basis as more developments in autonomous trucking emerge, both from Roberts and other authors.

“If there is an aspect of autonomous trucking you would like to see us address, please let us know,” said Denise Rondini, NACFE’s communications director. “We want to make this section of our website as robust as possible. Our attempt with this project is not to be all-inclusive, but rather to try to shed some light on the subject of autonomous trucking and begin to have meaningful dialogue with industry stakeholders and others outside of trucking who have an interest in furthering the automation of trucking.”

Full Disclosure: Jack Roberts is a trucking journalist who serves as senior editor for HDT along with independent projects for clients such as NACFE.