Equipment

No matter your place on the political spectrum, it is undeniable passage of the Republican-led tax reform measure was a monumental feat. This week we highlight our favorite news items from Capitol Agenda in 2017.

Sales of used Class 8 trucks climbed in November, rising 16% year-over-year as the inventory of available trucks has fallen sharply, according to ACT Research Co.

The futuristic appeal of the autonomous vehicles that began operating Dec. 21 on the Jacksonville Transportation Authority test track is the prospect that eventually hundreds of them could be shuttling passengers around downtown.

Self-driving cars may be the future, but relinquishing control of the wheel certainly takes some getting used to. It’s one thing to go (slowly) with the flow on well-marked city streets, for which many self-driving cars were initially developed and tested, but what happens when you throw icy winter road conditions into the mix?

Another fleet of mining trucks will join the growing ranks of machines operating autonomously using Caterpillar Inc. systems in Australia next year, reflecting the company’s push to cement industry partnerships with proprietary technology.

The market for the Tesla Class 8 truck keeps growing as UPS Inc. put in an order for 125 electric trucks, the largest order to date that has been made public.

>Deliveries by drones took a step closer to being allowed in the U.S. after a federal advisory panel agreed on a framework for allowing law enforcement to routinely track the small devices.

The launch of self-driving vehicle testing at the American Center for Mobility west of Detroit came with something that frequently confounds human drivers in Michigan — snow.