Semi-Autonomous Trucks Help Florida Contractor Stay Ahead

Finding enough qualified workers to meet the current construction demand is a real challenge in many hot markets of the U.S. right now. So when Tomahawk Construction needed truck drivers to work on a residential project in Naples, Fla., it found itself instead sitting one driver down in its office 40 miles from the jobsite to remotely run three semi-autonomous articulated dump trucks.

“For the past few years, really ever since COVID, it seems like we’ve had a hard time getting these lower level positions in the door,” says Scott Lyons, co-owner of Fort Myers, Fla.-based Tomahawk Construction. Long commutes to jobsites and tedious work driving between dig sites and spill piles has made it hard to attract new drivers, he says. “We’ve had two or three trucks just sitting these past few years; couldn’t find anyone to run them.”

Lyons was approached by Teleo, a construction tech start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif. The company—founded by a few veterans of Lyft’s efforts to build Level 4 driverless, fully autonomous cars—began focusing its efforts on semi-autonomous construction equipment in 2019.

“I took the leap of faith and I’ve been happy with it. We don’t have any trucks sitting [idle] right now,” says Lyons. The project involves dewatering a lakebed and the construction of concret