3PL Perspectives Hot Article: Drones, Autonomous Vehicles on Course to Disrupt the Supply Chain

Earlier this year, General Motors introduced its latest self-driving car – a car with no steering wheel or foot pedals – that’s expected to hit the streets in 2019. GM’s car is meant to drive itself with no assistance (hence no steering wheel) from the driver. This is the future – driverless vehicles. We are now on the edge of a mobility revolution that will eventually impact many parts of the future supply chain. Let’s look at a few of the possibilities and future trends.

Future unmanned vehicles, and particularly trucks, will not require drivers to operate them. We will move from Optionally Manned to Partially Manned to Totally Unmanned in the next 10 years. Some questions arise: How will the ever-present concern about driver hours change? If the truck is driving itself, does the driver still have to account for these hours as “driver hours” in order to consider driver fatigue? One theory is that driver hours will be modified and then eliminated entirely in the next 5 to 10 years as trucks become more and more autonomous. This will reduce the consideration for the human limitation of driver hours and push the concerns more toward fuel efficiency and range capability, since trucks will be able to embark on longer journeys.

Read the full article from the August issue of 3PL Perspectives.