The Volvo & Aurora Partnership

There are also autonomous trucks running on private roads in the oilfield pulling 3 trailers.

 

https://www.trucknews.com/technolog...unveils-triple-trailer-capability/1003211488/

 

Its one thing to point a truck down a nice, paved highway with 12' wide lanes, its a whole different ball game bringing a 120k+ lb truck down some sloppy, 25% grade goat trail in the middle of BFE.

 

I don't see it happening for a long time. Being able to read the road is a huge part of trucking off highway. The guys that do it for a living are excellent at it, they can see a soft spot on the road and know to lock up the axles and give it some RPM. They can see where a creek or pooled water along the road could have potentially compromised it, leading to a trailer getting sucked in and flopping the whole thing over. Traction is key and running off road those diff locks are being cycled in and out all the time because you have an almost 0% chance of turning when 12 drive tires are pushing you straight. But you also can't just unlock everything for every turn either or you could spin out.

What are these trucks going to do if they can't make a corner? Just stop and wait for a rescue? Back up and try again? Good luck with that in some cases. I've watched the loader have to slide trailers back onto the road before. I've even watched the loader walk down with the trucks, holding the trailer from falling off into the void.

There are a lot more variables with off road trucking than one would think. These tech folk have a long way to go yet.

 

Yet they’re doing it off-road in Texas pulling three trailers right now. Granted it’s mostly flat, but they’re still off highway without any lines and making corners pulling three trailers.

 

I don't think you can really compare that to the mountain goat trails out west. I have no doubt they could haul off a logging road if the ground is solid and hard pack, which isn't the case a lot of the time. There's some switchbacks so tight that your steer tire is on the edge of dropping into the void, meanwhile the trailer is inches from dropping into the ditch on the inside. Add in some mud or ice/snow and all it takes is hitting the brakes at the wrong time and that's it.