The Trump Administration policy that kickstarted a supply chain revolution
By Jeff Farrah, CEO, Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association
Autonomous trucks will help make America’s supply chain more resilient and support farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers. In the last several years, autonomous trucking companies have made steady and significant progress. This progress was made possible by a forward-leaning public policy decision under the first Trump Administration that drove private sector capital into AV trucking and laid the foundation for game-changing innovation.
Autonomous trucking is poised to be a major opportunity for the freight industry, which currently moves 72% of America’s goods. McKinsey estimates that autonomous trucking could reduce freight operating costs by up to 45%, saving between $85 and $125 billion annually. The cost savings and efficiency benefits of autonomous trucks will ripple through the economy, lowering costs for industry and consumers alike. The wider deployment of autonomous trucks will also help improve roadway safety and reduce the number of fatalities from large truck crashes, which hit over 12,000 in 2023 alone.
How AV 3.0 Changed the Landscape for Autonomous Trucking
The autonomous trucking sector forged ahead following a regulatory policy change undertaken in the first Trump Administration. In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) issued an AV policy guidance document – Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0 (AV 3.0). Within that guidance the Department included a key interpretation of federal regulations regarding the agency’s assumption about the driver of a commercial motor vehicle (CMV):
“In general, subject to the development and deployment of safe ADS technologies, the Department’s policy is that going forward [Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)] regulations will no longer assume that the CMV driver is always a human or that a human is necessarily present onboard a commercial vehicle during its operation.”
The policy guidance further clarified:
“[I]n the case of vehicles that do not require a human operator, none of the human-specific FMCSRs (i.e., drug testing, hours-of-service, commercial driver’s licenses (CDL)s, and physical qualification requirements) apply.”
Through these legal interpretations, the USDOT gave autonomous developers certainty that the testing and deployment of autonomous CMVs could proceed as long as the vehicles complied with non-human related safety regulations. That certainty translated to greater investor confidence and interest in the business potential of AV trucking and encouraged new investments that have allowed the technology to mature and grow.
To sustain this growth and ensure the economic and safety benefits of autonomous trucking can be felt nationwide, the Trump Administration and Congress need to build on the success of the AV 3.0. One important step that can be taken is to codify the AV 3.0 interpretation that federal CMV safety standards do not assume the presence of a human in the vehicle, an action AVIA championed in our recent federal policy framework – Securing American Leadership in Autonomous Vehicles. Codifying the FMCSA legal interpretation as a final agency rule or enacting it in federal legislation will provide added regulatory certainty to AV developers seeking to build and sustain AV operations and partnerships in the long term.
Private capital has rushed in to develop AV trucks
Following USDOT’s seminal 2018 guidance, investors have responded by enthusiastically backing AV trucking companies. AVIA used the preeminent private capital markets platform, Pitchbook, to examine investments into AV trucking companies with U.S. operations.
We found that since AV 3.0, there has been more than $6 billion in private capital invested into AV trucking companies, with even more in the public markets and acquisitions.
This investment has fueled leading autonomous trucking companies like Aurora, Bot Auto, Gatik, Kodiak, Plus, Stack, Torc, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and Waabi. These companies are scaling operations, employing Americans, and creating supply chain solutions.
Opening Up Opportunities for Improved Warning Devices
Like with its AV 3.0 interpretation, the Trump Administration can facilitate greater investment and advancement of autonomous trucking with smart public policy. USDOT should allow autonomous trucks to utilize new safety technologies to meet the warning device requirements included within 49 C.F.R. §§ 392.22 and 393.95. Written several decades ago, these regulations require a human to physically place warning devices (e.g., flares, warning triangles) in front of and behind a stopped CMV – a task that is dangerous for human drivers and challenging for unmanned AVs to meet. In December 2024, in the waning days of the previous administration, FMCSA denied an AV-industry backed exemption request that would have increased safety and allowed the use of new emergency warning device solutions that utilize cab-mounted beacons. USDOT should revisit that decision and allow for the use of cab-mounted beacons, FMCSA can not only further support the deployment of autonomous CMVs, but provide a new, safer option for human drivers as well.
In 2018 the Trump Administration was able to jumpstart the development of autonomous trucking by providing developers the regulatory room they needed to innovate, leading to a sharp increase in investment and economic growth. Now the Trump Administration has another opportunity to push AV trucking to new heights by building on their past accomplishments and helping to bring the vital economic and safety benefits of autonomous trucking to communities across the country – a true golden age of transportation in the United States.