At the end of June, Amazon made a significant bet on the autonomous trucking company Plus. It bought a fleet of 1,000 autonomous trucks from Plus, as well as an option to take a 20% stake in the company…

It comes as Amazon ramps up hiring on its delivery side in order to meet skyrocketing demand and ever-faster delivery times. But despite all the hiring, the company is struggling to find ways to retain workers, a challenge facing the trucking industry overall. Amazon, like other logistics companies, seems to be betting on autonomous vehicles as a way out. Autonomous trucking might help with driver recruitment not just for the relatively pie-in-the-sky future of a fully driverless truck, but also for shorter-term demands, where certain parts of the trucking process can be automated in order to make the industry more attractive to drivers.
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