Volvo Trucks North America has delivered its first electric-powered Class 8 truck on the East Coast to New York-based Manhattan Beer Distributors.

WASHINGTON — After years of working with emerging technologies in the automotive sector, Paccar Inc.’s new chief technology officer sees a similar transformation unfolding in the commercial truck market.

Although trucking companies are benefiting from a favorable business environment and strong economic growth this year, the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic took a significant toll on the industry in 2020.

The trucking firms that appear on the 2021 Transport Topics Top 100 For-Hire Carriers list are split nearly evenly between companies that reported a revenue decline in 2020 and those that still managed to grow during the year of COVID-19.

After navigating the disruption and uncertainty wrought by the coronavirus pandemic last year, the trucking industry has entered a historically strong business environment that many analysts expect to endure for the rest of 2021 and beyond.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services has partnered with autonomous vehicle developer Waymo to move freight with self-driving trucks in Texas.

Although autonomous trucks are still in their infancy, the continued development and eventual deployment of these vehicles represents a new frontier for the freight transportation business. As this technology advances in the coming years and decades, fleet operators that adopt self-driving trucks will encounter a new management challenge: finding the best ways to combine automation with human labor.

The road to autonomous trucking is long and littered with obstacles, but developers of self-driving systems for commercial vehicles are making clear and tangible progress in their mission to bring this technology to market.

While most developers of Level 4 autonomous truck technology are targeting driverless operation, some see near-term business cases for highly automated, self-driving trucks with a driver still in the vehicle.

Autonomous truck developer TuSimple raised $1.35 billion through its initial public offering, a move that will help fund the company’s push to commercialize self-driving trucks and expand its autonomous freight network across the United States.