Penske’s Thompson: Look to future but embrace AI today

“AI is embedded in our day-to-day lives. It’s not a distant technology. It’s not on its way. It’s here,” Thompson said. (Karen Foote/American Trucking Associations)

PITTSBURGH — The advance of artificial intelligence promises to help shape the future of trucking and fleet maintenance, but an executive at Penske Transportation Solutions emphasized opportunities to harness this technology today.

Samantha Thompson, vice president of customer experience at the truck leasing and maintenance giant, encouraged industry leaders to begin exploring how they can improve fleet operations and shop performance right now through the use of AI.

Those potential benefits cannot be ignored at a time when AI is already ensconced in our phones, vehicles, home appliances and streaming platforms, constantly learning our preferences and serving up recommendations.

“AI is embedded in our day-to-day lives. It’s not a distant technology. It’s not on its way. It’s here. It has been here for a while,” Thompson said during her keynote remarks Sept. 23 at the 2026 Fall Meeting of American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council.

The Fall Meeting also featured The AI Summit, a two-day program co-hosted by TMC and Transport Topics that presented seven educational sessions exploring AI implementation in trucking.

During her speech, Thompson discussed the convergence of maintenance and technology, a trend that has been accelerated by increasingly connected vehicles, rising computing power and the latest wave of AI capabilities.

Nonetheless, the experience and know-how that technicians have developed over the years remain irreplaceable.

“We have more institutional knowledge about how to maintain vehicles, how to diagnose, how to repair heavy equipment than any algorithm is going to accumulate any time soon,” Thompson said.

These “doctors of iron,” often with decades of hands-on experience, have seen system failures that aren’t in any database and can instinctively identify what’s happening with a vehicle before they see it, she said.

“The goal of AI isn’t to replace that experience. It’s to help us scale it,” Thompson added.

That’s where another skill set is growing in importance.

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(Karen Foote/American Trucking Associations)

Thompson described the emergence of “doctors of data,” who may not be experts at working on vehicles but understand the signals and patterns in the information they generate.

Moving forward, the fleet maintenance field will need both types of experts.

“The real opportunity is bringing these two disciplines together — the folks who are well versed in the data and the folks who are well versed on the vehicles themselves,” she said.

One clear use case for AI is enabling data-driven preventive maintenance programs.

“It’s a better decision about the right vehicle, the right maintenance at the right time,” Thompson said.

AI also can bolster the shift from reactive to predictive maintenance, enabling businesses to proactively identify and address emerging maintenance issues before a failure occurs and disrupts operations.

“Pattern recognition is the superpower of AI,” Thompson said. “It can review and analyze billions of data points in seconds, faster than any human being could possibly ever do.”

Another example is AI-guided repairs.

AI can help determine the root causes of maintenance issues and put the most relevant information in front of the technician when a decision needs to be made.

This can simplify diagnostics, shorten the path to the right answer, prevent repeat repairs and get the vehicle back in service as quickly as possible, Thompson said.

She also highlighted the value of AI-enabled performance benchmarking.

By comparing performance metrics against those of other operations with similar equipment and duty cycles, fleet managers can pinpoint and prioritize the best opportunities for improvement.

Penske provides this type of similar-fleet benchmarking through its Catalyst AI platform, which it introduced in 2024 and has since expanded.

In addition, AI can automate mundane processes, freeing workers to focus instead on high-value tasks.

“When we take that work off of people’s plates, we create room for people to do the things that humans are uniquely good at: judgment, relationships, problem solving, creative thinking, leadership,” Thompson said.

She closed by urging industry leaders to think about what AI could mean for their business in five or 10 years while also taking a close look at their operations now.

“We don’t have to wait for the future,” Thompson said. “We can start building AI into our workflows today.”