October 7, 2025 • 25 mins
Understanding and applying Total Cost of Ownership to your truck or fleet is critical for maximizing profits and productivity.
Brian Antonellis, senior vice president of fleet operations at Fleet Advantage explains what TCO does and how you can put it to work for your fleet today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
After years of R&D work, the signs are everywhere that we are
very close to seeing autonomous trucks deployed in real world
fleet operations here in the US.Let's just start with the first
(00:24):
question. I know you can't give any
secrets away, but we are gettingpretty close to seeing these
these amazing vehicles go into service, aren't we?
Yeah. Absolutely.
I think that's a that's a fair assessment.
And I mean, if you if you travelthe roads in Texas, you see
actually, you know, various makes of autonomous trucks which
(00:45):
are doing testing. It's public knowledge that
Aurora in May has actually removed the safety driver.
They're operating now with what they call an observer, which is
not a safety driver. I think there's a distinct
difference, but that tells us weare, we're really getting there.
We're we're really close. I would argue there's a
difference to be made with, you know, starting removing the
(01:07):
safety driver to, you know, fully scalable industrial
solution. We are more interested in the in
the second one then then maybe in the in the first one.
Of course you need the first to,to, to achieve the the second.
But our focus is, is really to, to be able to produce and
manufacture those autonomous trucks, you know on our main
production lines to do that at scale and then to deploy
(01:31):
autonomous transport solutions also at scale beginning first in
Texas, but then you know going going east and West 1st year.
Certainly initially we will focus on the on the on the
Sunbelt. The other interesting point was
for most of the past decade, it was primarily assumed that
autonomous would be some sort ofretrofit system that you would
(01:55):
buy a truck and you would add the system on you.
Volvo made the decision early onto fully integrate autonomous
into the into the VNVNL and talka little bit about this is
really isn't technology that youcan just add on and expect to
work well, is it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a
(02:16):
very, very conscious decision wemade that that we said, you
know, we will we will not do anyany up fitting.
You know, again, I spoke earlierabout it for us it's about
industrialization and the ability to scale this
technology. And you know, if you think about
the fact that into an autonomoustruck where you built in the
the, the redundancy, which meansyou have a second way to steer,
(02:37):
you have a second way to brake, you need to have redundant
communication, you need to have,you know, redundant computation,
vehicle motion management, redundant lights, etcetera.
If you want to up fit that all you will achieve is a
compromise. And to have a compromise
operating autonomously on a highway is maybe not the best
way forward. So that's why we were very clear
(02:57):
from the start that, you know, this needs to be integrated into
an existing plat or into a new platform so that we can really
ensure that we have a product which fulfils all the
requirements of a Volvo Group product and is not something
which is afterthought. I think every time you, you, you
do this at a, at a later point in time, it, as I said, you
(03:18):
know, it's more compromise and an afterthought.
And by that you cannot achieve the highest standards which you
want to have. The other interesting
misconception, or maybe not a misconception because the, the,
the technology developed organically was I will buy an
autonomous truck or an autonomous system and I will put
it in use. You Volvo made the decision,
(03:39):
another interesting decision to provide this as a service,
autonomous trucks as a service. And I think that makes sense.
I believe one thing we learned over you remember in 2025 or
2015, the first projections were, oh, this is going to be
easy. We'll have autonomous trucks in
five years. It proved to be a lot more
(04:01):
difficult to achieve the technology than was initially
predicted. And so I think my guess is what
you're going to tell me along that time, sort of the
understanding of how they could be deployed at least in the
early days changed as well. I'm guessing Volvo, you guys
want to have you want to monitorthis and manage it very
(04:23):
carefully and that's part of your decision.
I don't think you could just throw the keys to an average
fleet out there and say have funrunning your robot truck, see
you later. This is going to require some
hands on. We're still in the early days,
correct? Yeah, absolutely.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. And I, I mean, of course you're
right. 2015, you know, I think the, the industry itself
(04:45):
probably overestimated their capabilities and underestimated
the complexity of autonomous driving.
Now, when it comes to the, to the deployment and particular to
the adoption, we believe that, you know, autonomous trucking
is, is much more than just replacing the human driver with
a virtual driver. What you're actually doing is
you're complementing the transport industry with a new
(05:07):
transport system, not enormous transport system, which then
competes with traditional trucking.
We see freight, air freight, you, you name it.
And for that to, to, for that totake off, you need to provide
this ecosystem. And that ecosystem is much more
than the truck. You know, it's the truck, it's a
virtual driver, but you know it's also the terminals which
(05:28):
will be required particularly inthe first years.
Then you need to provide the ones which are operating the,
the the transport flows, but then you also need to provide
uptime etcetera. And we don't believe that, you
know, the adoption of autonomoustechnology particular for on
Hwy. transportation will happen if we're just handing over the
the key to someone. I don't think that's a that's a
(05:49):
suitable solution to begin with.And the the big, big, big
majority, if not all at the beginning, you know, will not be
able to to understand what is required.
And of course we want to ensure that we have a safe transport
system out there also. And that's why for us it's
important that we play a bigger role and that we are, you know,
providing transport as a service.
(06:10):
But again, that is for us to facilitate the adoption.
We're fully, it's fully clear tous that that is not, that cannot
be the only business model. We will, you know provide of
course, also more traditional business models in the in the
future. But again, first we need to see
the adoption before that can happen.
You made another great point andI'm glad you did.
You Volvo was also the first OEMto say what you just said is,
(06:33):
look, this is not at least in the early days, this is not
simply another layer we're adding on to trucking.
This is a completely new way of moving freight and I think your
approach that I've seen is you are approaching it differently
and you expect that it will haveto be managed differently.
Am I correct there? Yeah, correct assessment.
(06:55):
Again, in order to to facilitatethe adoption, we would play a
much bigger role than we usuallydo.
Again, this will not be the onlybusiness model transport as a
service, but we believe this will be key to make it happen
and to, to, to see it really taking off.
Otherwise, you know, I, I would expect that we have a very long,
(07:15):
you know, adoption rate. And if you think about all the
investments which were made intothe industry, not just by us,
but into the into the total industry, then then we think
it's actually justified to take that extra step.
Absolutely, 2, two more points before we get to the sort of
the, the fleet side of this is, I think it's interesting that my
opinion, at least right now, passenger car autonomous is a
(07:37):
little bit of a party trick. You know, you drive around and
oh, look, no hands in trucking. There's a very solid business
case for this, logistically speaking, driver shortage, all
that sort of thing. And the United States, or at
least North America, is particularly well suited to be
the launching pad. So trucking and the United
(07:59):
States seems to be the perfect launching platform for this
technology. Would you agree with that?
Oh, 100%. I mean, the, the, the size of
the market, the size of the, the, the freight industry, you
know, it has grown in recent years from 700 billion to over a
trillion. Absolutely.
I think the United States is absolutely the right continent
or the right country. Sorry to to stop that.
(08:23):
So let's look at this from the fleet side of things right now.
Who, how, who does Volvo envision as an ideal candidate
fleet wise for your autonomous trucks as a service?
I would expect probably start with larger fleets.
I know you have a very tight relationship with DHL.
Do you think it'll sort of starton the upper level and then sort
(08:45):
of trickle down as they say herein the States?
Yeah. I think it's, it's fair to say
that you know, initially, you know, we we need the early
adopters which will be the largefleets, but also you know,
brokers like like you were freight we work very closely
with. But again, as we're providing
transport as a service, we will have the ability to also to, you
(09:06):
know, bring in, you know, fleetswith a different size, with
smaller sizes into, into, into this, you know, new way of, of
transporting. And you know, my colleague Sasko
Shuklev, who, who always says, you know, you can benefit from
autonomy without having the hassle to operate it.
So by by offering this transportas a service, you know, we can
(09:27):
really attract a, a white, a white market or, or, or many
market participants. We believe also initially it
will be, it will be you know theones which have large freight
volumes but that will be initially after a while we will,
we will see this happening, you know trickling down as you said.
And what in your estimation these days is the ideal
(09:50):
application? You want hub to hub distance
wise certain regions of the country?
What? What if if someone were to come
to you and say, I'm interested in this, what sort of boxes
would you want to tick off? I think it is definitely, you
know, a long haul product that that that is that is clear.
(10:11):
And I think also, you know, if you think about a coast to coast
application, then of course you would have you would see the
maximum benefit of autonomy. You would be able to, you know,
to to to achieve the the the target destination much faster
than if you would use traditional trucking.
But it's also more predictable. You can also, you know, optimize
the fuel consumption. So even by that, you know,
(10:31):
bringing, bringing environmentaladvantages to the table.
I also, however, would would saythat in in most autonomous
systems, you know, it is important that the trucks or
systems, you know, continuously run.
The more usage you have, the thebetter the economics come
together in, in the system. Because this again, you know,
(10:52):
it's not just a truck, it's a whole ecosystem and that needs
to be utilised. So we need to have that in mind.
Right now you've got a human in the wheel in the United States.
I'm thinking Europe as well. You get about 10 hours a day out
of that asset. I know we're still early and
there's going to be a lot of room for improvement, but what
what, what is Volvo seeing in terms of where do you think you
(11:14):
could go in a day right now withan autonomous truck operating it
12 hours, 13? No, I, I, I think we've an
autonomous truck. We can, we, we, we can go beyond
that. We were able to go 2020 plus
whatever 2021 or some, some something like that that we see
as absolutely as as a possibility.
(11:35):
Doubling the the the use of the asset right there, right
out-of-the-box, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, and it's, it's an interesting 1.
You know, when you when you lookat the economics, we so for for
long have looked OK, how do we utilize best the asset?
But another way to look at it isalso how do you make most out of
a lane. So if you think about an
autonomous lane, you know, whichis connecting 2 locations, you
(11:57):
can also, you know, shift actually your way of thinking
about that, that you're looking at the lane.
How do I, how do I optimize thatone?
And then the the truck is is basically a cost point.
And I know again, I know we're early, but I've been studying
this for a long time and following it are the projections
we saw. There were many interesting,
better fuel economy, reduced maintenance, fewer emissions.
(12:20):
This is an A green technology inmany ways.
Are the early numbers you're getting in terms of maintenance,
fuel economy, emissions, are they sort of tracking with what
you thought you would see performance wise?
Yeah, I think it's a bit early days to talk about maintenance
and at this time fuel, fuel economy, I would say yes, we
(12:44):
can. We, we can see that when it
comes to maintenance. I also want to point out that,
you know, there's sometimes fearabout, you know, that, that this
new transport system, you know, will it eliminate jobs or not.
And my point of view is that autonomous trucks actually
require far, far higher service main or maintenance schedule
(13:04):
than, than than standard trucks.So we have here a three tier 3
tiered approach. It's, you know, preventive
condition based and also predictive.
But what is important to understand is that every time an
autonomous truck leaves a hub orleave leaves the station, you
know it will have went through athrough a pre trip inspection.
And that is something which not necessarily in that content in
(13:27):
that scope is happening, is happening today.
And that is a good example whereyou know new employment will be
made. I've said that I wrote a column
on that a couple years ago. We're going to need specialist
to look at the camera systems, LIDAR.
I figure if you're doing a cost a cross country trip at some
point you'll probably need at least 15 to 25 humans during the
(13:50):
course of that trip to fuel it, check it over, make sure the
load is secure, etcetera, etcetera.
Not to mention probably going tobe someone in sort of a Mission
Control role somewhere monitoring several trucks,
making sure they're proceeding, not having any difficulties.
That to me is a really, really appealing job as opposed to
(14:12):
being a long haul driver. I think a lot of people would
enjoy that job. Yeah, we, we actually have
already employed someone for that role.
So we have an operation center in Fort Worth.
And one of the tasks there is that you actually oversee, you
know, where are the trucks, are they heading, you know, with the
as, as predicted, et cetera. How many how many trucks does a
(14:33):
typical does that person manage?Today, you know, we, we're
operating with a launch fleet. So I don't think what we, what
we operate today is actually themaximum human being can or that
human being can, can control. I think it's a bit early for me
to make here now to give you a number, but I, I think you know
it, it will be, it will be a relatively high number of
(14:56):
trucks. Yeah, I would think so too.
All right, so let's talk about it from the fleet side.
I'm XYZ fleet. I'm maybe I'm running, I've got
a postal contract I'm making long haul, something like that.
I'm interested in this. I reach out to Volvo, sort of
walk me through what happens. How does this all come together
(15:17):
for one of your customers out there?
Because it's just seems if you start to think about it, you
just think, Oh my gosh, where would we even start, you know?
Yeah, interesting, interesting question.
Of course, I mean you know our starting lanes will be, will be,
will be in Texas. We have together with our
partner Aurora, we have two hubsin the Dallas area and then we
have one in, in Houston and one in one in El Paso.
(15:39):
So we will, we will focus firstly on the, on those ones.
And then of course if you are a customer and you have interest
in those routes you, you have loads for that, then you know,
we encourage everyone to reach out for autonomous solutions and
then we will meet and discuss what are your needs, what are,
what are how, how many freight, how many loads is it?
(16:00):
And then we will discuss a tailor made solution if, if, if
the freight demand is high enough, otherwise, you know,
there's, there's the possibilityof course to bring in or to, to
consolidate load load with others.
But at the end it's you know, aswe begin in, in, in, in Texas,
(16:22):
you know, it's, it's very much that we and the customer will
work very close together to ensure that we are integrating
our freight system into the existing freight system.
The customers having we have youknow certain system supports
where we provide API etcetera toensure that we also have a, you
(16:43):
know, smooth digital process when it comes to, you know from
from order to cash that that we can generate here also a good
customer experience. So the other part that has
always fascinated me, and I think this is really the nuts
and bolts. Let's say everything's in place.
We've got a truck in Dallas. It is slated to go to, oh, I
don't know, let's say El Paso. How does, who tells the truck
(17:08):
where to go? Who tells how?
How do you, how does how does that sequence of events take
place? How does?
How does it know where to go andhow does it know where to come
back to? Yeah, of course.
I mean, first of all, there's anoperations team which is, which
is, you know, taking on the, the, whatever the, the
(17:29):
truckloads of the day. And then the the, the Aurora
driver, you know, which is in essence the virtual driver,
which which we'll be using at this stage is receiving its
instruction to go from A to B. In this case, I think you said
Dallas to to El Paso and it you know, will leave the terminal
(17:54):
from a from a launchpad will basically leave from that from
that launchpad will will will enter the highway, will continue
on the highway and then exit thehighway in El Paso to arrive at
the at the predefined terminal at A at a predefined stop.
It's amazing. And then of course there's the
Uberisation aspect which is, which is a much more I guess in
(18:18):
integrated and is it more of a hands off approach?
How would you describe that entire angle to the operation?
Yeah. I mean, you know, volatonomous
solutions were so to speak, borndigital.
So of course we, we want to utilize all the capabilities of
a of a digital system and removeas much administrative human
(18:41):
burden as as possible. Absolutely.
That's that's the objective, if that's what you mean with
uberization. Yeah, Yeah.
I think that's some confusion there.
So I think we're going to probably see a new kind of
freight hub grow out of this. It'll probably be a little more
geared towards servicing the truck and making sure the truck
(19:02):
is inspected and good to go to. I mean, there will, there will
be some evolutionary changes to the way fleets operate when they
adopt these vehicles, I think. Yeah, I think the service
component is something which needs to needs to be emphasized.
There will be more service demand than maybe for a for a
standard truck and particularly in the first years where you
operate more from those from those terminals.
(19:23):
Then of course there needs to bealso the physical focus there.
However, you know they are also of course clear.
That's the clear desire that we can offer end to end
transportation. And then of course you know that
will be you know a new opportunity or so for the for
the, for the service network of Volvo to then operate at at new
(19:45):
locations, at customer locationsas there is a higher service
demand. You know, that also means that
the servers will need to happen at new places where it's not
necessarily happening today. I've felt for a long time this
is going to be revolutionary. I don't think most people are
prepared for how. Significant this is going to be
(20:07):
when you everything you've talked about here, when you look
at the utilization of the asset,you're going to be able to move
freight much faster, much farther, more more efficiently
reducing emissions. I, I fully believe that this is
really going to go big once people understand that it's
safe, that it's reliable, that it, that it just, you know, you
(20:29):
buy it, you buy a Volvo VNL and you can suddenly double your use
of that of that asset. That's huge.
So no pressure on you. And I know you're, you're just
trying to get going here, but doyou agree?
Do you think this is going? To be no, no, I, I Jack, I
absolutely agree. And I mean, you know, we, we,
you know created a transport company a couple of years ago.
(20:52):
We have a motor car license in three years and I mean we are
operating since three years. And what we've done is we've
basically taken standard trucks,of course from Volvo and we have
been, you know, for for 2 1/2 years, we've basically been
mimicking the future autonomous transport flow to learn it and
to be able to, to also prepare ourselves for the moment that we
(21:13):
can, that we can, you know, use fully autonomous trucks.
But that also means that we havelearned how to integrate into
our customer networks, into our customer process and into the
operations, which is, which is really important that, you know,
when the technology's there thatwe're actually able to, to
utilize it. And since last year, we're,
we're operating now autonomouslywith safety driver.
(21:33):
And we do that, you know, with, with customers like like DHL and
Uber integrating in, in into their flows already.
And so we're, we're absolutely, we're, we're getting close.
We, we learn every day, we're humble because as you say, this
is something different, this is something new.
But we feel that we're doing allthe right steps to be able to
(21:54):
then, you know, use this new technology with the with the
advantages it will bring. Final question, let's say you're
a a mid size fleet. You're watching this.
How long do you think it will bebefore those customers, which I
would imagine are sort of the bulk of of the of the Class A
market? When can those conversations
(22:15):
begin with Volvo about this technology?
Probably. I would say think you're looking
at two to five years of sort of cutting your teeth with the
bigger fleets, but you tell me. No, I I think you're not.
You're not too far off. I tend to be closer to the two
than to the five. I would, I would argue at the
end of the day, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a new thing and
(22:38):
you know, this, this industry has been very good in, you know,
making promises and, you know, not so much being able to keep
the promises when it comes to timeline.
So I, I want to be a bit careful, but we definitely, you
know, after we, we we're, you know, have have made the launch
and after we've industrialized the product, we think we should
be able to roll this out also to, you know, mid size fleets in
(23:02):
a, in a rather short time period.
Absolutely. It's very exciting.
It's been a decade. I'll sort of turn final thoughts
over to you. What would you like to leave our
our our viewers with? What thoughts?
Just stay tuned. Start thinking differently about
this. Start looking at your
operations. What advice would you have for
(23:22):
someone who is interested in this and sort of waiting to see
how your Texas experiments develop?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Yeah, I, I, I mean, you said earlier, you know, this is much
different than what what we see in the robotaxi space.
And I and I fully agree with you.
However, I think it is really important to understand that
autonomous tracking is much different than than traditional
(23:44):
tracking. It requires this ecosystem and
really to understand that one has to be become part of a new
ecosystem is very important moreof autonomous solutions.
You know, we we are dedicated tosupport our customers to take
benefit of that and we want themto be able to participate in it.
And for that reason, we have created this this more the the
(24:06):
transportation company. For that reason, we're operating
already today to be able to really be the hand to our
customers to, to guide them and to, to help them as this
technology with with its impact as it is unfolding.
So we're there and we know exactly what we have in front of
us to, to remove the safety driver.
(24:29):
We will do this in a, in a very diligent in a very careful way.
But we know it's coming. We know it's close.
And yeah, we look, we look forward to that and look forward
to yeah, do this together with with the existing customer base
we have. It's a fascinating, fascinating
technology, fascinating development.
(24:51):
I think we're all going to be very, very curious to see where
this goes, and I wish you guys the best of luck with this.
After years of R&D work, the signs are everywhere that we are
very close to seeing autonomous trucks deployed in real world
fleet operations here in the US.Let's just start with the first
(00:24):
question. I know you can't give any
secrets away, but we are gettingpretty close to seeing these
these amazing vehicles go into service, aren't we?
Yeah. Absolutely.
I think that's a that's a fair assessment.
And I mean, if you if you travelthe roads in Texas, you see
actually, you know, various makes of autonomous trucks which
(00:45):
are doing testing. It's public knowledge that
Aurora in May has actually removed the safety driver.
They're operating now with what they call an observer, which is
not a safety driver. I think there's a distinct
difference, but that tells us weare, we're really getting there.
We're we're really close. I would argue there's a
difference to be made with, you know, starting removing the
(01:07):
safety driver to, you know, fully scalable industrial
solution. We are more interested in the in
the second one then then maybe in the in the first one.
Of course you need the first to,to, to achieve the the second.
But our focus is, is really to, to be able to produce and
manufacture those autonomous trucks, you know on our main
production lines to do that at scale and then to deploy
(01:31):
autonomous transport solutions also at scale beginning first in
Texas, but then you know going going east and West 1st year.
Certainly initially we will focus on the on the on the
Sunbelt. The other interesting point was
for most of the past decade, it was primarily assumed that
autonomous would be some sort ofretrofit system that you would
(01:55):
buy a truck and you would add the system on you.
Volvo made the decision early onto fully integrate autonomous
into the into the VNVNL and talka little bit about this is
really isn't technology that youcan just add on and expect to
work well, is it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a
(02:16):
very, very conscious decision wemade that that we said, you
know, we will we will not do anyany up fitting.
You know, again, I spoke earlierabout it for us it's about
industrialization and the ability to scale this
technology. And you know, if you think about
the fact that into an autonomoustruck where you built in the
the, the redundancy, which meansyou have a second way to steer,
(02:37):
you have a second way to brake, you need to have redundant
communication, you need to have,you know, redundant computation,
vehicle motion management, redundant lights, etcetera.
If you want to up fit that all you will achieve is a
compromise. And to have a compromise
operating autonomously on a highway is maybe not the best
way forward. So that's why we were very clear
(02:57):
from the start that, you know, this needs to be integrated into
an existing plat or into a new platform so that we can really
ensure that we have a product which fulfils all the
requirements of a Volvo Group product and is not something
which is afterthought. I think every time you, you, you
do this at a, at a later point in time, it, as I said, you
(03:18):
know, it's more compromise and an afterthought.
And by that you cannot achieve the highest standards which you
want to have. The other interesting
misconception, or maybe not a misconception because the, the,
the technology developed organically was I will buy an
autonomous truck or an autonomous system and I will put
it in use. You Volvo made the decision,
(03:39):
another interesting decision to provide this as a service,
autonomous trucks as a service. And I think that makes sense.
I believe one thing we learned over you remember in 2025 or
2015, the first projections were, oh, this is going to be
easy. We'll have autonomous trucks in
five years. It proved to be a lot more
(04:01):
difficult to achieve the technology than was initially
predicted. And so I think my guess is what
you're going to tell me along that time, sort of the
understanding of how they could be deployed at least in the
early days changed as well. I'm guessing Volvo, you guys
want to have you want to monitorthis and manage it very
(04:23):
carefully and that's part of your decision.
I don't think you could just throw the keys to an average
fleet out there and say have funrunning your robot truck, see
you later. This is going to require some
hands on. We're still in the early days,
correct? Yeah, absolutely.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. And I, I mean, of course you're
right. 2015, you know, I think the, the industry itself
(04:45):
probably overestimated their capabilities and underestimated
the complexity of autonomous driving.
Now, when it comes to the, to the deployment and particular to
the adoption, we believe that, you know, autonomous trucking
is, is much more than just replacing the human driver with
a virtual driver. What you're actually doing is
you're complementing the transport industry with a new
(05:07):
transport system, not enormous transport system, which then
competes with traditional trucking.
We see freight, air freight, you, you name it.
And for that to, to, for that totake off, you need to provide
this ecosystem. And that ecosystem is much more
than the truck. You know, it's the truck, it's a
virtual driver, but you know it's also the terminals which
(05:28):
will be required particularly inthe first years.
Then you need to provide the ones which are operating the,
the the transport flows, but then you also need to provide
uptime etcetera. And we don't believe that, you
know, the adoption of autonomoustechnology particular for on
Hwy. transportation will happen if we're just handing over the
the key to someone. I don't think that's a that's a
(05:49):
suitable solution to begin with.And the the big, big, big
majority, if not all at the beginning, you know, will not be
able to to understand what is required.
And of course we want to ensure that we have a safe transport
system out there also. And that's why for us it's
important that we play a bigger role and that we are, you know,
providing transport as a service.
(06:10):
But again, that is for us to facilitate the adoption.
We're fully, it's fully clear tous that that is not, that cannot
be the only business model. We will, you know provide of
course, also more traditional business models in the in the
future. But again, first we need to see
the adoption before that can happen.
You made another great point andI'm glad you did.
You Volvo was also the first OEMto say what you just said is,
(06:33):
look, this is not at least in the early days, this is not
simply another layer we're adding on to trucking.
This is a completely new way of moving freight and I think your
approach that I've seen is you are approaching it differently
and you expect that it will haveto be managed differently.
Am I correct there? Yeah, correct assessment.
(06:55):
Again, in order to to facilitatethe adoption, we would play a
much bigger role than we usuallydo.
Again, this will not be the onlybusiness model transport as a
service, but we believe this will be key to make it happen
and to, to, to see it really taking off.
Otherwise, you know, I, I would expect that we have a very long,
(07:15):
you know, adoption rate. And if you think about all the
investments which were made intothe industry, not just by us,
but into the into the total industry, then then we think
it's actually justified to take that extra step.
Absolutely, 2, two more points before we get to the sort of
the, the fleet side of this is, I think it's interesting that my
opinion, at least right now, passenger car autonomous is a
(07:37):
little bit of a party trick. You know, you drive around and
oh, look, no hands in trucking. There's a very solid business
case for this, logistically speaking, driver shortage, all
that sort of thing. And the United States, or at
least North America, is particularly well suited to be
the launching pad. So trucking and the United
(07:59):
States seems to be the perfect launching platform for this
technology. Would you agree with that?
Oh, 100%. I mean, the, the, the size of
the market, the size of the, the, the freight industry, you
know, it has grown in recent years from 700 billion to over a
trillion. Absolutely.
I think the United States is absolutely the right continent
or the right country. Sorry to to stop that.
(08:23):
So let's look at this from the fleet side of things right now.
Who, how, who does Volvo envision as an ideal candidate
fleet wise for your autonomous trucks as a service?
I would expect probably start with larger fleets.
I know you have a very tight relationship with DHL.
Do you think it'll sort of starton the upper level and then sort
(08:45):
of trickle down as they say herein the States?
Yeah. I think it's, it's fair to say
that you know, initially, you know, we we need the early
adopters which will be the largefleets, but also you know,
brokers like like you were freight we work very closely
with. But again, as we're providing
transport as a service, we will have the ability to also to, you
(09:06):
know, bring in, you know, fleetswith a different size, with
smaller sizes into, into, into this, you know, new way of, of
transporting. And you know, my colleague Sasko
Shuklev, who, who always says, you know, you can benefit from
autonomy without having the hassle to operate it.
So by by offering this transportas a service, you know, we can
(09:27):
really attract a, a white, a white market or, or, or many
market participants. We believe also initially it
will be, it will be you know theones which have large freight
volumes but that will be initially after a while we will,
we will see this happening, you know trickling down as you said.
And what in your estimation these days is the ideal
(09:50):
application? You want hub to hub distance
wise certain regions of the country?
What? What if if someone were to come
to you and say, I'm interested in this, what sort of boxes
would you want to tick off? I think it is definitely, you
know, a long haul product that that that is that is clear.
(10:11):
And I think also, you know, if you think about a coast to coast
application, then of course you would have you would see the
maximum benefit of autonomy. You would be able to, you know,
to to to achieve the the the target destination much faster
than if you would use traditional trucking.
But it's also more predictable. You can also, you know, optimize
the fuel consumption. So even by that, you know,
(10:31):
bringing, bringing environmentaladvantages to the table.
I also, however, would would saythat in in most autonomous
systems, you know, it is important that the trucks or
systems, you know, continuously run.
The more usage you have, the thebetter the economics come
together in, in the system. Because this again, you know,
(10:52):
it's not just a truck, it's a whole ecosystem and that needs
to be utilised. So we need to have that in mind.
Right now you've got a human in the wheel in the United States.
I'm thinking Europe as well. You get about 10 hours a day out
of that asset. I know we're still early and
there's going to be a lot of room for improvement, but what
what, what is Volvo seeing in terms of where do you think you
(11:14):
could go in a day right now withan autonomous truck operating it
12 hours, 13? No, I, I, I think we've an
autonomous truck. We can, we, we, we can go beyond
that. We were able to go 2020 plus
whatever 2021 or some, some something like that that we see
as absolutely as as a possibility.
(11:35):
Doubling the the the use of the asset right there, right
out-of-the-box, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, and it's, it's an interesting 1.
You know, when you when you lookat the economics, we so for for
long have looked OK, how do we utilize best the asset?
But another way to look at it isalso how do you make most out of
a lane. So if you think about an
autonomous lane, you know, whichis connecting 2 locations, you
(11:57):
can also, you know, shift actually your way of thinking
about that, that you're looking at the lane.
How do I, how do I optimize thatone?
And then the the truck is is basically a cost point.
And I know again, I know we're early, but I've been studying
this for a long time and following it are the projections
we saw. There were many interesting,
better fuel economy, reduced maintenance, fewer emissions.
(12:20):
This is an A green technology inmany ways.
Are the early numbers you're getting in terms of maintenance,
fuel economy, emissions, are they sort of tracking with what
you thought you would see performance wise?
Yeah, I think it's a bit early days to talk about maintenance
and at this time fuel, fuel economy, I would say yes, we
(12:44):
can. We, we can see that when it
comes to maintenance. I also want to point out that,
you know, there's sometimes fearabout, you know, that, that this
new transport system, you know, will it eliminate jobs or not.
And my point of view is that autonomous trucks actually
require far, far higher service main or maintenance schedule
(13:04):
than, than than standard trucks.So we have here a three tier 3
tiered approach. It's, you know, preventive
condition based and also predictive.
But what is important to understand is that every time an
autonomous truck leaves a hub orleave leaves the station, you
know it will have went through athrough a pre trip inspection.
And that is something which not necessarily in that content in
(13:27):
that scope is happening, is happening today.
And that is a good example whereyou know new employment will be
made. I've said that I wrote a column
on that a couple years ago. We're going to need specialist
to look at the camera systems, LIDAR.
I figure if you're doing a cost a cross country trip at some
point you'll probably need at least 15 to 25 humans during the
(13:50):
course of that trip to fuel it, check it over, make sure the
load is secure, etcetera, etcetera.
Not to mention probably going tobe someone in sort of a Mission
Control role somewhere monitoring several trucks,
making sure they're proceeding, not having any difficulties.
That to me is a really, really appealing job as opposed to
(14:12):
being a long haul driver. I think a lot of people would
enjoy that job. Yeah, we, we actually have
already employed someone for that role.
So we have an operation center in Fort Worth.
And one of the tasks there is that you actually oversee, you
know, where are the trucks, are they heading, you know, with the
as, as predicted, et cetera. How many how many trucks does a
(14:33):
typical does that person manage?Today, you know, we, we're
operating with a launch fleet. So I don't think what we, what
we operate today is actually themaximum human being can or that
human being can, can control. I think it's a bit early for me
to make here now to give you a number, but I, I think you know
it, it will be, it will be a relatively high number of
(14:56):
trucks. Yeah, I would think so too.
All right, so let's talk about it from the fleet side.
I'm XYZ fleet. I'm maybe I'm running, I've got
a postal contract I'm making long haul, something like that.
I'm interested in this. I reach out to Volvo, sort of
walk me through what happens. How does this all come together
(15:17):
for one of your customers out there?
Because it's just seems if you start to think about it, you
just think, Oh my gosh, where would we even start, you know?
Yeah, interesting, interesting question.
Of course, I mean you know our starting lanes will be, will be,
will be in Texas. We have together with our
partner Aurora, we have two hubsin the Dallas area and then we
have one in, in Houston and one in one in El Paso.
(15:39):
So we will, we will focus firstly on the, on those ones.
And then of course if you are a customer and you have interest
in those routes you, you have loads for that, then you know,
we encourage everyone to reach out for autonomous solutions and
then we will meet and discuss what are your needs, what are,
what are how, how many freight, how many loads is it?
(16:00):
And then we will discuss a tailor made solution if, if, if
the freight demand is high enough, otherwise, you know,
there's, there's the possibilityof course to bring in or to, to
consolidate load load with others.
But at the end it's you know, aswe begin in, in, in, in Texas,
(16:22):
you know, it's, it's very much that we and the customer will
work very close together to ensure that we are integrating
our freight system into the existing freight system.
The customers having we have youknow certain system supports
where we provide API etcetera toensure that we also have a, you
(16:43):
know, smooth digital process when it comes to, you know from
from order to cash that that we can generate here also a good
customer experience. So the other part that has
always fascinated me, and I think this is really the nuts
and bolts. Let's say everything's in place.
We've got a truck in Dallas. It is slated to go to, oh, I
don't know, let's say El Paso. How does, who tells the truck
(17:08):
where to go? Who tells how?
How do you, how does how does that sequence of events take
place? How does?
How does it know where to go andhow does it know where to come
back to? Yeah, of course.
I mean, first of all, there's anoperations team which is, which
is, you know, taking on the, the, whatever the, the
(17:29):
truckloads of the day. And then the the, the Aurora
driver, you know, which is in essence the virtual driver,
which which we'll be using at this stage is receiving its
instruction to go from A to B. In this case, I think you said
Dallas to to El Paso and it you know, will leave the terminal
(17:54):
from a from a launchpad will basically leave from that from
that launchpad will will will enter the highway, will continue
on the highway and then exit thehighway in El Paso to arrive at
the at the predefined terminal at A at a predefined stop.
It's amazing. And then of course there's the
Uberisation aspect which is, which is a much more I guess in
(18:18):
integrated and is it more of a hands off approach?
How would you describe that entire angle to the operation?
Yeah. I mean, you know, volatonomous
solutions were so to speak, borndigital.
So of course we, we want to utilize all the capabilities of
a of a digital system and removeas much administrative human
(18:41):
burden as as possible. Absolutely.
That's that's the objective, if that's what you mean with
uberization. Yeah, Yeah.
I think that's some confusion there.
So I think we're going to probably see a new kind of
freight hub grow out of this. It'll probably be a little more
geared towards servicing the truck and making sure the truck
(19:02):
is inspected and good to go to. I mean, there will, there will
be some evolutionary changes to the way fleets operate when they
adopt these vehicles, I think. Yeah, I think the service
component is something which needs to needs to be emphasized.
There will be more service demand than maybe for a for a
standard truck and particularly in the first years where you
operate more from those from those terminals.
(19:23):
Then of course there needs to bealso the physical focus there.
However, you know they are also of course clear.
That's the clear desire that we can offer end to end
transportation. And then of course you know that
will be you know a new opportunity or so for the for
the, for the service network of Volvo to then operate at at new
(19:45):
locations, at customer locationsas there is a higher service
demand. You know, that also means that
the servers will need to happen at new places where it's not
necessarily happening today. I've felt for a long time this
is going to be revolutionary. I don't think most people are
prepared for how. Significant this is going to be
(20:07):
when you everything you've talked about here, when you look
at the utilization of the asset,you're going to be able to move
freight much faster, much farther, more more efficiently
reducing emissions. I, I fully believe that this is
really going to go big once people understand that it's
safe, that it's reliable, that it, that it just, you know, you
(20:29):
buy it, you buy a Volvo VNL and you can suddenly double your use
of that of that asset. That's huge.
So no pressure on you. And I know you're, you're just
trying to get going here, but doyou agree?
Do you think this is going? To be no, no, I, I Jack, I
absolutely agree. And I mean, you know, we, we,
you know created a transport company a couple of years ago.
(20:52):
We have a motor car license in three years and I mean we are
operating since three years. And what we've done is we've
basically taken standard trucks,of course from Volvo and we have
been, you know, for for 2 1/2 years, we've basically been
mimicking the future autonomous transport flow to learn it and
to be able to, to also prepare ourselves for the moment that we
(21:13):
can, that we can, you know, use fully autonomous trucks.
But that also means that we havelearned how to integrate into
our customer networks, into our customer process and into the
operations, which is, which is really important that, you know,
when the technology's there thatwe're actually able to, to
utilize it. And since last year, we're,
we're operating now autonomouslywith safety driver.
(21:33):
And we do that, you know, with, with customers like like DHL and
Uber integrating in, in into their flows already.
And so we're, we're absolutely, we're, we're getting close.
We, we learn every day, we're humble because as you say, this
is something different, this is something new.
But we feel that we're doing allthe right steps to be able to
(21:54):
then, you know, use this new technology with the with the
advantages it will bring. Final question, let's say you're
a a mid size fleet. You're watching this.
How long do you think it will bebefore those customers, which I
would imagine are sort of the bulk of of the of the Class A
market? When can those conversations
(22:15):
begin with Volvo about this technology?
Probably. I would say think you're looking
at two to five years of sort of cutting your teeth with the
bigger fleets, but you tell me. No, I I think you're not.
You're not too far off. I tend to be closer to the two
than to the five. I would, I would argue at the
end of the day, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a new thing and
(22:38):
you know, this, this industry has been very good in, you know,
making promises and, you know, not so much being able to keep
the promises when it comes to timeline.
So I, I want to be a bit careful, but we definitely, you
know, after we, we we're, you know, have have made the launch
and after we've industrialized the product, we think we should
be able to roll this out also to, you know, mid size fleets in
(23:02):
a, in a rather short time period.
Absolutely. It's very exciting.
It's been a decade. I'll sort of turn final thoughts
over to you. What would you like to leave our
our our viewers with? What thoughts?
Just stay tuned. Start thinking differently about
this. Start looking at your
operations. What advice would you have for
(23:22):
someone who is interested in this and sort of waiting to see
how your Texas experiments develop?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Yeah, I, I, I mean, you said earlier, you know, this is much
different than what what we see in the robotaxi space.
And I and I fully agree with you.
However, I think it is really important to understand that
autonomous tracking is much different than than traditional
(23:44):
tracking. It requires this ecosystem and
really to understand that one has to be become part of a new
ecosystem is very important moreof autonomous solutions.
You know, we we are dedicated tosupport our customers to take
benefit of that and we want themto be able to participate in it.
And for that reason, we have created this this more the the
(24:06):
transportation company. For that reason, we're operating
already today to be able to really be the hand to our
customers to, to guide them and to, to help them as this
technology with with its impact as it is unfolding.
So we're there and we know exactly what we have in front of
us to, to remove the safety driver.
(24:29):
We will do this in a, in a very diligent in a very careful way.
But we know it's coming. We know it's close.
And yeah, we look, we look forward to that and look forward
to yeah, do this together with with the existing customer base
we have. It's a fascinating, fascinating
technology, fascinating development.
(24:51):
I think we're all going to be very, very curious to see where
this goes, and I wish you guys the best of luck with this.
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