Unlimited Capacity

When grocery store shelves sat empty during the pandemic, people started to recognize the impact to our nation’s supply chain, the backbone of the economy. Olivia Hu, head of autonomous trucking at Uber Freight, saw an opportunity: autonomous trucks could alleviate these pressures while delivering real benefits to shippers, carriers and consumers alike. High turnover, safety and health concerns during the pandemic, and underutilized assets had turned a long-simmering challenge into a full-blown crisis.

Hu’s solution is nothing short of revolutionary. By spearheading Uber Freight’s autonomous trucking program, she is working to unlock what she calls “unlimited capacity”—a vision for a hybrid human-driven and autonomous freight system that never stops, never fatigues and creates better, smarter logistics networks.

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The Crisis Behind the Innovation

The U.S. trucking industry faces a driver shortage that could exceed 160,000 by 2030, according to the American Trucking Associations. The workforce is aging out, younger generations show little interest in arduous over-the-road driving, and demand from e-commerce continues to grow. (By 2029, the U.S. online shopping market is projected to reach $1.8 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion in 2024, according to Forrester Research.)  As Hu puts it: “As an over-the-road truck driver, you are alone and have to find parking, showers, a warm meal, and a comfortable and safe place to sleep in a foreign place, all while being away from your family. It is a very taxing lifestyle.”

It’s a blunt reality, but one that has inspired her to build a model for the future: autonomous long-haul freight paired with human-driven local runs, creating a hub-and-spoke system that keeps goods moving and drivers closer to home.

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Physical AI Meets Physical Reality

Unlike flashy demonstrations of self-driving cars, Hu’s work tackles the hardest problem: scaled adoption of technology in the real world. She and her team focus on what Uber Freight calls “physical AI”—AI systems that enable machines to interact with and navigate the physical world, including self-driving trucks.

The payoff is measurable: Uber Freight’s autonomous trucking partners report fuel savings, consistent on-time performance and increased visibility. Strategic partnerships with Aurora and Waabi are pushing the frontier even further, with Aurora earlier this year achieving a milestone of fully self-driving trucks, without anyone behind the wheel, completing roundtrip hauls between Dallas and Houston, delivering live, commercial freight.

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A Groundbreaker in Motion

What makes Olivia Hu a Groundbreaker isn’t just her role at Uber Freight—it’s her ability to reframe a challenge as a generational opportunity. She is redefining what it means to drive resilience into the logistics ecosystem: building capacity to improve supply chains for all consumers us who depend on it, deploying AI where it adds true value and pushing innovation into real-world freight corridors.

For Hu, autonomous trucking isn’t about machines replacing humans. It’s about designing a future where the supply chain is stronger, safer and more productive than before. “Unlimited capacity isn’t about trucks,” she says. “It’s about unlocking possibilities.”

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