Business
For our second episode with Waymo, we chat with Jon Rainwater, a CDL driver who's training truck drivers how to interact and monitor Waymo's fleet of Automated Trucks. Jon sees the future of automated trucking as a huge opportunity for all generations to take part in as this new way of moving freight across the nation is being developed and tested on highways today. Waymo will also start driving along interstates in Texas including I-10, I-20, and I-45, driving the interesting and promising commercial route between New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas exploring how their tech might be able to create new transportation solutions. Jon is a CDL training instructor for Waymo Via trucking where he trains new Class A drivers in partnership with Transdev (one of our partners who recruits and manages our trained drivers) 2-3 times a week on how to interact with the Waymo self-driving system. He actually helped put together our trucking-specific training and develop the final exam our trained drivers for trucking need to take at the end of the training! He's been with the program since June 2019, and prior to that he was a truck driver for the majority of his career. He also previously worked as a case manager at the Salvation Army and was an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army.