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Trucking firms are revved up for 2018, with predictions of tight capacity and strong demand for freight hauling setting the stage for an anticipated big year ahead for the industry, and indicators pointing to a potentially sustained period of business expansion in the United States and around the globe.

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.