Tales from the Road: Celebrating our Truck Team for Truck Driver Appreciation Week
Truck drivers perform a vital job in our economy, but their careers are as challenging as ever due to stressors on the national supply chain. This week, we’re honoring our Safety Drivers and AV Operators for the integral role they play in developing and deploying safe autonomous driving technology and keeping our economy moving.
For Truck Driver Appreciation Week, we’re taking the time to thank our Truck Team — the Safety Drivers and AV Operators that make our work possible. This team refines our autonomous system in the real world, and the team’s knowledge and expertise makes reaching our goal of safely deploying commercial autonomous truck software possible.
Trucking is a $730 billion dollar industry, and all of us rely on trucks for the goods that we use every day. But trucking faces many obstacles, including a driver shortage, supply chain disruptions worsened by the pandemic, and growing demand on drivers. Driving big rigs is a tough and often dangerous profession, and the job means time away from home and loved ones for days, even weeks, at a time.
Embark is proud to be addressing these issues head on, building an industry-leading Truck Team in the process. Our Safety Drivers are experienced truckers that have hundreds of thousands of safe miles under their belts and extensive careers operating big rigs. Our AV Operators serve as their co-pilots on the frontier of autonomous truck innovation.
Together, our Driver and Operators are working to create a trucking industry with better working conditions, and a safer and more efficient supply chain for all.
From Driver to Embark Driver
Safety Drivers play a critical role not only in operating our test fleet, but also in informing every step of the design of the Embark Driver and our operations playbook. By working with our engineering team, our AV Operators, and our Commercial team, they’re providing valuable insight to help the commercialization of the Embark Driver. This enables Embark to design its autonomous system with the knowledge of dozens of seasoned trucking veterans.
While the Embark Driver takes on long stretches of highways, our Safety Drivers also complete hauls on the first- and last-mile on surface streets, helping to refine our transfer point model as we test our technology with our fleet partners.
Putting “Safety” in “Safety Driver”
Prioritizing safety is at the heart of what we do, and our Safety Drivers embody this value at its core. When hiring Safety Drivers to join the Embark team, we look for candidates with a minimum of 10 years of experience in tractor-trailer and a clean driving record. These requirements have allowed us to build an industry-leading Safety Driver team with tens of millions of total safe miles driven.
Our Operators develop a deep understanding of our autonomous system and an appreciation for safety from day one at Embark. Their job is to inform the Safety Driver in real-time of expected behaviors of the system, while they run a variety of development and release tests on the Embark Driver. They are critical to ensuring safe operation of our test fleet, and are there to troubleshoot, fix, and document data collected during truck operation.
All of this is foundational to the safety culture that we have at Embark today, and it’s one of the reasons we sport an industry-leading safety record, with zero NHTSA- or FMCSA-reportable crashes and safety incidents since Embark was founded in 2016.
Tales from the Road
At Embark, we recognize the many sacrifices truck drivers have made over the years, and we pride ourselves on creating technology that will improve conditions on our roads and the livelihoods of truckers.
Our Truck Team is crucial to the success of our company, and we’re excited to spotlight our Safety Drivers and Operators this week. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to meet some of our Safety Drivers and Operators and hear their tales from the road!
