The politest trucker on I-45 has nobody in the seat. On the 240 miles between Dallas and Houston, a big rig let several cars merge from an on-ramp. Another moved over for a truck on the shoulder. Neither honked. Aurora says its driverless rigs can't honk on their own, Esther Fung reports in the Weekend Journal. At Kodiak, another driverless-truck company, a retired driver named Jorge Baeza can honk for one from a control room.
Aurora Innovation (AUR) runs about 30 big rigs in Texas and nearby states and expects 200 by year-end. Volvo plans 300 with Aurora and Waabi by the end of 2027. Aurora figures 30,000 could be on the road by 2030. About two dozen states, mostly in the South, now allow them with no human aboard under conditions. There's no federal safety standard yet. The math pushes it along. It cost $2.34 a mile to run a truck in 2025, and about 44% of that is the driver's wages and benefits. Fuel is 21%, and diesel is up more than 62% since late February. A human must stop after 11 hours. A driverless truck doesn't, and Dallas to Atlanta is 780 miles.
For now the robots take the middle mile, depot to depot. People still load the trailer, hand it off and drive the last stretch. The rigs can't even back up without a human. McLane, a big distributor with 3,700 tractors and more than 6,000 drivers, plans up to 10 Aurora trucks by year-end. Goldman Sachs figures driverless trucking matches human cost in the U.S. in 2028. NHTSA counts 69 fatal crashes tied to automated or driver-assist systems since July 2021, and none involved a truck with an automated-driving system.
The job in the seat
Truck driving is the most common job for men without a college degree, the Teamsters' Peter Finn says. The union sued California in August, saying driverless rigs could wipe out more than 200,000 semi-driver jobs there. In West Texas, Detmar Logistics pays about 180 drivers $80,000 to $120,000 a year to haul frack sand. Its two Aurora trucks run 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and it plans about 30 more by year-end. The CEO says he isn't cutting drivers. Baeza started at Kodiak as a safety driver. Back then he'd ask his bosses, "Can I take over?" Now he says, "it's so much smoother." He's the picture of the next job.
Our read
Career. Watch this one. The technology is coming for the easiest miles first, the long flat highway between two depots. The first and last miles, the yard, the dock and the command center stay human longer. That's the move for a driver, and Baeza already made it. The pay in the seat is real. So is the clock. Goldman Sachs expects driverless trucks to match human costs in 2028.
If you or someone in your house drives for a living, two lines in your plan matter this week. Check the 401(k) vesting date, so a job change doesn't leave company money behind. Then size the emergency fund to the gap a retraining stretch would open. Six months is a fair place to start. Do it while the paycheck is still coming in. A review is where we find the umbrella before the first drop.