Though Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy may have killed and buried the dreaded “driver shortage” narrative while attempting to push out 200,000 non-domiciled drivers, this October it rose from the grave and once again walks tall among us.
Only this time, rather than pointing towards “workforce development” or easing CDL credentialing (DOT right now is up to quite the opposite), “driver shortage” salesmen now point toward a future that’s “driverless.”
Big fleets and Elon Musk are once again talking “driver shortage,” and DOT has been quietly clearing the way for automation for years.
“There is a really serious shortage of truckers, there just aren’t enough people who want to drive trucks, which are crucial for transport throughout America,” said Elon Musk in a recent interview. “So, an autonomous Semi is actually going to be very important to address the shortage of truck drivers. And also will be great for improving safety, and making it easier on truck drivers to have a self-driving Semi is going to dramatically improve safety and comfort for truck drivers that use the Tesla Semi.”
Musk’s Tesla recently opened a factory in Nevada dedicated to producing 50,000 Tesla Semi Class 8 trucks each year, and Musk says they’ll enable self-driving on those trucks by the end of this year, or early next year.
Musk obviously has trucks to sell, and is no stranger to product rollout delays, but a recent Wall Street Journal article chronicled the rise in self-driving trucks.
The WSJ headline: “The Most Polite Trucker in America Is a Driverless 18-Wheeler.” (And we thought the most polite trucker was Jamie Hagen, maybe Paul Marhoefer or Daniel Snow.)
The driverless trucks are polite because, as that article’s author saw, they slow for cars coming off the on-ramp and change lanes to avoid trucks pulled over on the shoulder, courtesy maneuvers common for most true pros already.
“Self-driving cars are on the cusp of moving from novelty to commonplace,” according to the WSJ article. “Waymo driverless taxis buzz around cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. Next up are the biggest, loudest, most-daunting-to-other-drivers vehicles on the highway: the trucks.”
The article cites human drivers’ HOS limitations, the rising cost of diesel, and yes an “acute driver shortage” reported from businesses as powering self-driving’s growth.
Aurora has 200 self-driving trucks on the road in Texas, Volvo plans 300, and Amazon, Pepsi and Walmart all have pilot programs going.
[Related: Fleet, developer aim for driverless trucking this year]
Not only is the business demand documented by WSJ, the regulatory willingness is too.
DOT in July announced initiatives to possibly do away with steering, wiper, and brake pedal requirements to full-on sprint toward driverless trucking.
Other longtime regs hang-ups for driverless operation — like trucks needing warning triangles deployed in the case of a breakdown — are coming undone, too.
“I have never seen a more supportive regulatory environment from the federal government,” driverless start-up Waabi’s COO, Lior Ron, told WSJ.
September saw DOT release a national strategy on automated vehicles, making clear the department anticipates the “transportation system will continue to include conventional manually driven vehicles, even as adoption of AVs increases.”
Nonetheless, the current administration clearly hopes to accelerate adoption of this technology.
[Related: DOT clearing way for driverless trucks with wiper, mirror, steering exemptions]
In October, a court shot down a cargo van operator’s requests for an immediate administrative stay of a waiver for Aurora and any other autonomous trucking company allowing cab-mounted warning beacons in lieu of traditional warning triangles.
In the American Transportation Research Institute’s most recent annual Top Industry Issues report, big fleets once again listed the “driver shortage” as a top concern. This issue fell out of the Top 10 in 2025 but has been in the Top 5 in 17 of ATRI’s 22 annual surveys.
ATRI President and COO Rebecca Brewster said “the need for qualified drivers is on its way up again.”
In the WSJ article, Aurora estimated that by 2030, 30,000 autonomous trucks could be on the road.
If Elon Musk has his way, there will be at least 50,000 self-driving capable Tesla Semis alone on the road each year from 2027 on.
Company drivers, in particular, are taking notice. In addition to individuals like Jonathan Wood, who took his message that human drivers should be required in autonomous trucks to Congress, autonomous trucks were company drivers’ No. 3 top issue of concern in ATRI’s recent issues report.
The issue didn’t break the top 5 for owner-operators, nor the top 10 for multiunit fleets.
[Related: Driverless trucking in ‘first innings,’ but fears rise of a blowout game]
