It’s been a problem that has been building well before the Brexit vote and is far from being only a UK issue. The entire world’s HGV industry is facing a shortage of drivers. While once in nations from Iceland to Australia, being an HGV driver was seen as a good job, those days are over.

Long hours, separation from families, increasingly poor pay, and seen as pariahs by other motorway users, HGV driving is not what the 1970s’ song Convoy made the industry seem.

In an attempt, however, to overcome these issues, in the UK self-driving technology might soon be applied to the HGV industry. This will not be though the first time this has been tried. A similar attempt in the USA, backed by billions of dollars, ended in failure after a self-driving truck on a test-run killed a pedestrian, souring the industry to investors.

According to Cheshire Live, a teleoperation is currently being trialled up in north-east England, where a 40-tonne HGV is being piloted over a 5G communication network. The £4.8 million project is funded by the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport to realise the benefits of cutting-edge technological developments in both telecommunication and vehicular teleoperation. Such a combination of emerging technologies could result in optimal route planning, reduced emissions, reduced labour movement and safer journeys.

At present, the teleoperated lorry is being put through its paces at the Nissan test track in Sunderland as part of a “ last mile delivery ” system – transporting goods on the final, shortest leg of their journey – to support manufacturing logistics. It’s a fitting example of how human effort can be relieved from the most intensive stage of the logistical chain.

To bring this vision to reality, the retailer Wilko recently made a £3 million investment into StreetDrone – one of the key partners with us on the teleoperated HGV project. StreetDrone is now aiming to bring this technology to UK roads by the end of 2023, albeit initially in smaller vehicles than HGVs.

Forklift trials were conducted in four warehouses in 2020 using Phantom Auto technology, which allowed the forklifts to be controlled and driven by ‘drivers’ sitting in distant offices.

According to the BBC, some saw this concept, teleoperation, as a stepping-stone between traditionally driven vehicles and the truly autonomous ones of the future.

Tried before

It only made too much sense at the time. The future in self-driving vehicles wasn’t in the passenger car but in America’s truck industry. The majority of America’s truck drivers were approaching retirement age and without new blood entering the industry, the haulage industry could come to a jarring stop.

With a huge amount of press excitement, in 2016 Uber’s self-driving trucks made their first commercial delivery ­– 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer on a 120-mile trip in Colorado.

In November 2017, The New York Times wrote that trucking was a natural target for automation. In theory, automated trucks could stay on the road longer than those with human drivers and, over time, were expected to be less prone to accidents because they don’t get sleepy or distracted. Eventually, these factors were expected to make self-driving trucks a cheaper alternative.

In 2017 companies and investors were on pace to put just over $1 billion into self-driving and other trucking technologies, 10 times the level of three years previous, according to CB Insights, which tracks the venture capital industry.

 “We think self-driving technology has tremendous potential to solve some of the big problems that the trucking industry has today,” said Alden Woodrow, the product manager for Uber’s self-driving truck unit.

Some companies were looking at using autonomous trucks in convoys, with a manned driver in the lead vehicle. Once the trucks were close to their city destinations, they would pull over and humans would take the wheel.

However, in 2018 an Uber autonomous truck was involved in a fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona, killing pedestrian Elaine Herzbery. Uber was testing its self-driving vehicles on public roads in Tempe, Arizona, where the accident occurred, as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

With that, Uber shut down its self-driving truck unit.