Class action lawsuit against Swift to proceed

Truck-Lite names new vp of sales

Truck-Lite Co. has named John Cecco the new vice president of sales. In addition to aftermarket sales, Cecco will oversee Truck-Lite's customer service, pricing and forecasting departments after the retirement of Bob Ives, former vice president of business development.

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Trucker Path app surpasses 1.5 million installs

Trucker Path announced that the app has surpassed 1.5 million installs and is the first in the trucking industry to reach over one million downloads on Google Play. Meanwhile, Trucker Path's freight-matching marketplace Truckloads app has reached over 250,000 downloads.

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Waymo Sues Uber, Otto Over Stolen Autonomous Technology

Alphabet's self-driving car unit Waymo is suing Uber and its Otto autonomous trucking subsidiary for stealing the company's autonomous vehicle sensor technology. Alphabet is also the parent company of Google.

In court documents, Waymo accuses Otto and Uber of taking the company's intellectual property in order to avoid the risk, time, and expense of independently developing the technology on its own.

Waymo's case centers around its custom-built LIDAR or Light Detection and Ranging sensor technology. The sensors allow a vehicle to see a 3D picture of the world around it to detect and measure the shape, speed, and movement of obstacles. Not simply accusing Uber and Otto of copying the technology, Waymo's was given a tip that Otto's LIDAR design bore a striking resemblance to its own.

In its own investigation, Waymo found evidence that former employee and current Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski downloaded over 14,000 confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's hardware systems, according to a blog post from the company. These files included blueprints, design files and testing documentation totaling 9.7 GB of data.

Waymo accuses Levandowski of using specialized software installed onto his company laptop to achieve this. The company said that after he transferred the information to an external hard drive, he wiped and reformatted his laptop in an attempt to erase evidence.

“We believe these actions were part of a concerted plan to steal Waymo's trade secrets and intellectual property,” the company stated in its blog post.

Waymo said that it has devoted seven years to research and development for the technology, building up more than 1.5 million miles of self-driving experience on public roads and even more than that in simulations.

Related: Uber, Otto Talk About Plans to Transform Trucking

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Startup Firm Unveils Prototype Autonomous Truck

Prototype autonomous truck in Nevada desert. Photo: Embark

Yet another startup tech firm has rolled into the autonomous truck arena. San Mateo, Calif.-based Embark publicly revealed its prototype self-driving truck on Feb. 24.

The company, which gained approval from the State of Nevada earlier this year to begin testing its truck on public roads, said its self-driving technology enables a truck “to drive from exit to exit on the freeway without any human input.”

Embark said its tractor-trailer setup uses a combination of radars, cameras and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) depth sensors “to perceive the world around it.” The data points captured are processed via a form of Artificial Intelligence known as Deep Neural Nets (DNNs) that “allow the truck to learn from its own experience— much like humans learn from practice.”

“Analyzing terabyte upon terabyte of real-world data, Embark's DNNs have learned how to see through glare, fog and darkness on their own,” said Alex Rodrigues, CEO and co-founder of Embark. “We've programmed them with a set of rules to help safely navigate most situations, how to safely learn from the unexpected, and how to apply that experience to new situations going forward.”

Embark's truck is built specifically for “long, simple stretches of freeway driving between cities, rather than all aspects of driving.”

Like other autonomous truck designs, including the Freightliner Inspiration truck and the Otto (owned by Uber) truck, Embark's computerized truck is meant to be handed off to a human driver once it heads off the highway, who will then navigate local streets to the destination. “A human driver will still touch every load, but with Embark they're able to move more loads per day, handing off hundreds of miles of freeway driving to their robot partners,” is how the company put it.

Rodrigues said he was inspired to launch Embark after ...Read the rest of this story

Economic Watch: Home Sales, Consumer Sentiment Rise as Fed Mulls Rake Hike

There are increasing signs the U.S. economy is gaining momentum in the first quarter of the year with gains in home sales and consumer confidence, but it is also fueling speculation that interest rates could head higher as soon as next month.

Sales of new homes surged 3.7% in January from the month before to an annual rate of 555,000, according to a Commerce Department report released Friday. That figure is also 5.5% better than for the same time a year ago.

The gains were less than a consensus estimate from analysts, but continued to point to a strengthening housing market despite higher prices and mortgage rates, according to Reuters.

The department revised downward its 2016 total to 561,000 new home sales, but it was still the best year since 2007 and a 12% improvement from 2015.

This follows a report from a couple of days earlier showing existing-home sales stepped out to a fast start in 2017, surpassing a recent cyclical high and increasing in January to the fastest pace in almost a decade, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, expanded 3.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.69 million in January, better than many analysts were expecting.

The pace is 3.8% higher than a year ago and surpasses November 2016 as the strongest since February 2007. The conjecture is that unseasonably mild winter weather throughout much of the East and South may be getting the spring selling season off to an early start.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said January's sales gain signals resilience among consumers even in a rising interest rate environment.

"Much of the country saw robust sales activity last month as strong hiring and improved consumer confidence at the end of last year appear to ...Read the rest of this story

Ruan names new chief information officer

Ruan Transportation Management Systems announced that Dan Greteman has joined Ruan's executive team as vice president and chief information officer.

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