Original subtitles

-[Adam] America is on the move.

In the most epic way.

The United States has invested as much as

$1.6 trillion a year in logistics,

which is kind of a fancy way of saying transport,

that's trillion, with a capital T,

but that's not the only number related to America in motion

that breaks my brain.

Do you realize that 430 million pieces of mail

are delivered every single day?

Public transport makes 10 billion trips every year.

There are free trains that are three miles long.

There are cargo ships that are 1300 feet long.

That's like a floating empire state building,

but these modern, massive marvels that

breathe life and give oxygen to our economy,

they're not just brute feasts.

Every year, they continue to advance, to innovate,

becoming more aerodynamic, more intelligent,

and they're always full of surprises.

Today, I'm at the Daimler truck manufacturing center

in Cleveland, North Carolina.

It's spread over 1.2 million square feet.

We'll get an inside look at how 1700 workers build

their freightliner trucks that are essential to our economy

and ship nearly everything across the country.

Oh, and did I mention,

this is the first time in history

that Daimler has ever let anyone inside

their factory to film.

Then we'll see how one company is making a flying machine

that costs the same as a high end pickup truck.

Plus, we'll get a glimpse of what transport

was like in the past

and what it could be in the future.

How will the latest technology allow us

to go further, faster than ever before.

I'm gonna to find out.

So grab your CB and let's get the truck out of here.

This is Modern Marvels, Moving America.

[upbeat music]

[plane engine roars]

[alarm blares]

Now if you've ever been driving down the freeway

and seen a massive truck towering over you,

there is an awfully good chance, it was made by Daimler.

In fact, Daimler trucks alone

deliver nearly 3 billion tons of cargo every single year.

Daimlers footprint in north America

includes a number of iconic brands

but the Freightliner is a créme de la créme,

accounting for one out of every

three truck sales in America.

Now, it all started in the 1930s,

when Leland James, president of Consolidated Freightways,

approached manufacturers about building truck parts

with lightweight aluminum

instead of the traditional steel.

When his idea was met with skepticism and resistance,

he hired his own team of engineers

and he built the truck his way.

The result lighter weight

meant they could haul more freight with every load

and it was an instant success.

Daimler trucks acquired the company in 1981

and has since built the brand

to the top choice for trucking.

Today, The Cleveland North Carolina factory

is Diamler Trucks largest truck manufacturing facility

in America and inside 1700 workers build trucks.

And these long haulers are loaded with advanced technology

and are built to last for a million miles or more.

That's enough to drive around planet earth 40 times

- Hi Adam, how're you doing? - Doing well sir.

- Good to see you.

- [Adam] Thank you for having me.

This place is amazing and massive,

and I want to know everything

- you got it.

- [Adam] Each truck Diamler produces is a custom order.

Meaning they come in different shapes,

sizes and configurations chosen by the customer.

They can be built to handle different jobs and be outfitted

with different options inside like places to sleep and eat,

Some are even better equipped

than a New York city apartment.

- [Erik] So every seven minutes a truck rolls off the line,

- [Adam] Sorry sorry, every seven minutes,

- Every seven minutes, a truck rolls off the line.

- [Adam] You're producing roughly eight trucks an hour.

- You got it.

- So will you take me through

the making of the iconic freightliner?

- Absolutely. Let's go.

- [Adam] Each Of Daimler's trucks

take about 3000 parts to build,

but because each truck is custom,

there's about 44,000 different possible parts

that could be used.

And this is the station where

the high volume parts are stored.

It's 26 feet high and 270 feet in length,

longer than a Manhattan city block running north to south.

- Is there an automated system

that selects it and brings it back?

- Yeah.

- So this is like an automated

truck building vending machine.

- [Kari] Exactly.

- [Adam] A high volume part

will be needed on nearly every truck Diamler builds.

So of course they buy them in bulk,

but in order to avoid the bulk parts,

clogging up the production line,

they break them down into smaller boxes

they're called totes.

The totes are then fed into the automated storage system

where they'll stay until needed,

at which point, the system accesses the tote

and spits it out to be delivered to the line

where the parts are needed when they're needed.

Its starting to make sense to me,

how you guys were able

to have a new custom truck roll off the line

every seven minutes,

because now you know where the things are.

And I know you've got a lot of trucks to build

and a lot of materials to get back to,

so but I'll let you get back to it,

will you take me on to the next step.

- Absolutely.

- Yes, sir.

- Thank you.

- [Adam] There's really no better place

to learn about trucks than here at Daimler

because over 120 years ago,

their namesake, Gottlieb Daimler,

invented the very first motorized truck

by taking a horse-drawn cart and giving it

a four horsepower engine.

Today, the freight trucking market

is worth over $700 billion.

- [David] You have to think about railroad tracks

and roads as a circulatory system of the United States.

And what trucks do is they've enabled the last mile,

where you can move anything

right to a specific point on the planet.

- [Adam] However, in the US,

it wasn't until after world war one,

that trucks grew in demand

after extensive use by the military.

- Once United state system expanded

across the United States,

trucks became the preferred mechanism

for moving a lot of cargo

and certain movies and songs came along

that popularized the idea of a road cowboy,

a person who could get in the cab of a truck

and travel great distances,

and there was some romance and adventure in that idea.

- [Adam] And that romance peaked in the 1970s

when trucker culture took off,

leading to chart topping songs like C.W. McCall's Convoy,

high grossing films like smokey and the bandit.

And of course, trucker hats,

would stuck around until the two thousands,

but are making a comeback as we speak.

Today, 70% of our goods are transported via truck,

and if long haul truckers stopped driving,

within 24 hours, hospitals would start

running out of basic supplies.

And within three days,

most grocery stores would start running out of food

and ATM's would be out of cash.

But as long as Daimler is here,

we'll be able to count on their Freightliners.

I'm starting off at the beginning of the line

in the Chassi department.

The chassis are basically the spine of the trucks.

This is where critical pieces such as the axles brakes

and the air compression tanks

for the braking system are installed.

- So we're find the chassis in station one.

We install all the internal cross-members

that gives us strength to the truck.

- [Adam] It takes a minimum of 353 workers

to operate this part of the assembly line.

And because the line itself is in constant motion,

they are in constant motion too.

The chassis, moves down the line nonstop

at half a mile an hour.

I've noticed you have the big old chain coming down here.

- What you to refer to here, that's called the flipper.

- Oh my... It's a truck rotisserie

- [Adam] There are close to 16 million trucks

operating on America's roadways today,

enough to reach the moon.

If you line each of them up

and I'm at Daimler's largest truck factory,

checking out how the most common

of these long haulers is made.

- All my wha... It's a truck rotisserie.

- Its pretty amazing - It's insane

- [Steve] So as you can see the chassis

is currently built upside down.

We built an inverted.

- [Adam] I didn't even realize.

- That's ergonomically friendly for the employees.

- I see,

- [Adam] Depending on what the customer wants,

the chassis can be made short or long,

potentially up to 40 feet in length.

The number of cross-members can range from five to eight

and axles have a minimum of two to a maximum of seven

that can come with different braking systems

like drum or disc.

The thing that each bolt

represents work done by a Diamler worker.

That is absolutely insane.

I know you that have a lot of work.

You are the man, I'm gonna head on down the line.

[upbeat music]

- [Adam] Whether it's behind the wheel of a Freightliner

or your family car,

driving is a huge part of American culture.

The future technology is coming for our cars as well,

starting with driverless cars,

which actually got their start on our moon.

- [David] Real autonomy started in

the space age where lunar vehicles

were being experimented with.

And there needed to be some sort of

solution from an engineering standpoint

to account for the two and a half second delay

between earth and the moon.

So these lunar rovers were designed to

move autonomously in their environment.

- [Adam] And today, back here on earth,

we're now looking at a future

where we all could be chauffeured around by our cars

and more autonomous vehicles means less traffic

because they are built to communicate

with each other to eventually eliminate things

like traffic jams and bottlenecks on our roadways.

- [David] The number one advantage is safety.

90 plus percent of all traffic accidents

are related to human error.

And so autonomous vehicles are going to

eliminate that for the most part.

- [Adam] While we might have to wait another 10 years

or more before one autonomous vehicles

are part of our day-to-day reality.

When they do arrive, their impact could be huge.

Researchers have predicted,

they could save hundreds of thousands of lives

over the course of a decade,

but what innovation could top driverless cars?

How about flying cars?

[engine roars]

Earlier this year or real life flying car

was tested in Europe,

that can convert from an automobile

to a plane in under three minutes.

So what used to be science fiction

could become part of our transportation future,

and that future can't comes soon enough

because daily commutes are up since the 80s

from around 22 minutes to almost a half hour each way.

Which adds up each year,

we lose the equivalent of about

one full-time work week to our commutes.

But in this nondescript 20,000 square foot facility.

One company is hoping to change the way we get around

by bringing flying to the masses.

- Most people give up

on that dream of actually owning

or even flying helicopters because it's very expensive.

So our goal was in the beginning to create affordable

helicopter where the average guy

can own your own helicopter and fly it.

And that's a game changer.

- [Adam] Brand new traditional helicopters

can range from $300,000 to up into the millions.

Most of us probably can't afford that,

but these mini machines cost less

than half that starting at just 51,000 bucks.

- [Dwight] This business started as a side business

in the late nineties and over time,

it's morphed into something more.

- [Adam] Composite FX makes their single seaters

out of composite materials,

just like most helicopters built today,

but where they stand out on top of the price,

is their weight maxing out at just 450 pounds.

- A 35 Piece construction is all cured and together

and now it can pop on the mold.

And it's pretty easy with two guys.

- [Dwight] It's actually built to fit in a small trailer,

or it will fit in a standard two car garage.

So it gives the owner many, many more options.

I've done things as crazy as gone,

pick a pizza before with one,

it's a freedom that if you've not done it,

it's very difficult to explain.

People that ride and enjoy motorcycles, they use that.

Well, it's the freedom and the flying

is not any different than that.

- [Adam] Helicopters may become even more mainstream

if composite FX has their way,

but another familiar form of flight is looking to graduate

into the world of human transportation.

- The first drone arguably

could be considered the Kettering aerial torpedo

that was developed around 1918.

It was a completely autonomous

and it was the most rudimentary version of a guided missile.

It actually did not see any time in actual war,

just because by the time that they were ready,

the war was pretty much done with.

- [Adam] But today drones are

for much more than just military.

The commercial drone market, while young is growing,

with the value expected to skyrocket

from 4.4 billion in 2018

to over 500 billion, 2028.

- [Edward] There are currently more than

a million drones registered with the FAA.

To put it in comparison really,

what we're looking at is like for every one aircraft,

there are approximately three or four drones

in existence flying around today,

and common use for drones

are for agricultural, to inspection,

to deliveries of goods and services.

Its application is only limited to our creativity.

- [Adam] As well as shooting sweeping aerial shots

for films and TV shows like this one,

but the future of drones may lie in transport.

- So on passenger drones in the world,

I know it's hard to believe,

but that is actually a thing today.

The Ehang passenger drone

will do approximately 20 miles to the charge

and they'll do that about 80 miles per hour.

So as a first passenger drone, it's a wonderful start.

- [Adam] On top of eliminating traffic from your commute,

passenger drones are emission free

since they're fully electric.

So they'll help pave the way

towards a greener future that finally resembles the Jetsons.

Last year, the movement of goods across the country

was never more extreme

with American consumers generating over $4 trillion

in total retail sales.

That would be enough to buy Apple

and still have a trillion bucks left over.

And to help move all those purchases around,

truck drivers did their part,

spending as many as 300 days on the road a year,

making the cabs on their trucks, like the Freightliner,

their home away from home.

Next up, how does Daimler put together their custom cabs

using 64 robots working seamlessly in tandem

without ever getting in each other's way?

Where does the process begin for the cabs?

- [Tom] So it starts over here against the far wall.

You've got sidewalls.

So you can see the robots over there moving.

- [Adam] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughing]

- They build sidewalls.

This right here is your deck sail.

This builds the floor of the cab.

And then they'll all meet right here,

which is called the mainframe.

And then the robots will henrob all of 'em together.

When I mean henrob.

- Yeah.

- This is a self piercing rivet,

and it'll shoot through and see how it flares out,

holds it together.

- Henrob is a process that uses a self piercing rivet

that is shot through two pieces of metal

and then expands to lock itself into place,

stitching together the entire cab without using any welding.

These rivets eliminate the fumes and sparks

of the welding process.

Plus, they have the same strength as a weld,

but last twice as long.

- How do these machines handle customization

and yet turn out these cabs?

- Every sidewall, deck, back wall,

they all have a barcode on it.

And as it goes down here, it'll tell you,

it'll let you know

that that's the right build for what that truck is.

- [Adam] For this part of the assembly,

most of the work is done by robots,

who, after scanning a part,

immediately know which custom build it's for

and get to work on it.

Then they come around and those are the unpainted cabs.

- Those trucks right there are waiting to go to paint.

Those are the ones we just built.

- [Adam] Once the cabs are finished,

they're lifted onto a mezzanine and shuttled over to paint.

It's here where Daimler can cover them

in any color you want,

like over 100 different shades of white.

This is really where I see the beauty of mechanization.

And if you guys watch it, it's kind of hypnotic.

These future Freightliners may be inching closer

to joining the fleet of trucks crisscrossing America,

carrying our freight,

but there's one piece of cargo that's in transport daily

that should be pretty familiar, the mail.

- The US Post was there from the nation's beginning,

and the US Post played this really important role

of facilitating the transportation of information,

connecting the country together.

And it moves in lockstep with the nation.

- [Adam] The United States Postal Service

delivers more mail than any other postal service

in the world with over 161 million addresses

to serve across the country.

But over the course of its history,

the Postal Service has occasionally had to get creative

with how they deliver our mail.

Some ways you know, like the Pony Express,

which served the western half of the country

running from St. Joseph, Missouri

to Sacramento, California.

- Their strategy was to use a series of riders on horses.

It would go as fast as they can for 12 to 15 miles,

pass the mail off to someone else with a fresh horse

and go on and go on.

- [Adam] And incredibly, it reportedly only lost one bag

of mail during its entire run.

But there were other unique ways in which the mail was moved

such as a system of pneumatic tubes

just like the ones you remember using at banks

that shuttled the mail around the country's biggest cities.

That same technology was even tested

as a way to transport people underground in New York

before the advent of the subway.

But still in use today

is the most unique delivery method ever, mail by mule.

- These distant places, if there are no roads necessarily,

there might just be a trail to get to a mining camp.

They would turn to something like mules.

And today, there is still an existing mule train in Arizona

that carries the mail six days a week down the Grand Canyon,

nine miles to your community living at the bottom

and then back up.

- [Adam] The Grand Canyon route is a last of its kind,

still being served by an animal.

But while mules may be perfect for a trek

down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon,

for our roadways, there's no competing with iron horses

like the Freightliner.

And after seeing the beginnings of the cabs come together,

I skipped down the line

to see where the nearly finished cabs meet their chassis

and finally start to resemble a truck.

Is that a full cab?

A full cab just floated down from the damn ceiling.

Like, a full cab.

And there's another cab up there.

- [Adam] America's trucks moved almost

12 billion tons of freight in 2019

and brought in more than $791 billion in revenue.

More than the GDP of over 200 countries,

including Switzerland.

Now, I'm about to see one of the last steps in the process

where the cabs and the chassis meet.

Is that a full cab?

A full cab just floated down from the damn ceiling.

Like, a full cab.

And there's a nother cab up there.

It literally looks like the scene

when they bring the Millennium Falcon

in through the space dock.

- It's fully automated and it's synced.

You can see the next one coming.

They're lined up where every serial number

matches to the chassis.

So custom cab and then a custom chassis.

And they basically air it up and power it up.

So this truck starts having power shortly after this.

- Now, inside are the seats, the beds,

the creature comforts.

Everything's already installed?

- Everything's fully installed.

That cab, there's no other work remaining

to do with that cab.

- [Adam] And these Freightliner cabs

can be decked out with different types of seats and floors.

You want hard wood or heated?

You got it.

And if we're talking overnighter cabs,

these can come with cabinets, refrigerators, dinette sets,

and beds, including single, double, and even bunk beds.

It's such a remarkable moment,

all of the technical wizardry becomes a truck.

But that moment can't happen without the next component,

the engines, built by Daimler's Detroit factory,

the Detroit diesel.

Paired here with their transmissions,

they combine to make their powerful,

yet extremely efficient drive train.

This engine right here,

what kind of power is pushing a Freightliner?

- That's one of our Detroit DD15 engines.

Everything married together gives a very powerful product

out there on the market.

- Shout out to the 313.

To be able to tow loads as heavy as 330,000 pounds,

they pack up to 600 horsepower.

That's enough towing capacity for a single Freightliner

to pull three Boeing 737s.

What happens between here

and the moment they roll out of the facility?

- There's a number of different things

still happening on the line.

You have the battery install,

you have the final electrical hookup,

you have the hood install.

It gets filled with fluid, tires,

and then it starts up and drives off the end of the line.

- [Adam] Wow.

Once these trucks roll off the line,

they are tantalizingly close

to being finished Freightliners,

but they'll need something to drive on.

- We are pretty lucky

when we had driving cross country today.

In 1919, it was almost impossible.

Future president Dwight Eisenhower,

who at the time was Lieutenant Colonel in the US army

was assigned to drive cross country

from Washington DC to San Francisco.

- [Adam] Half of the journey was over dirt

and sometimes non-existent roads.

Traveling an average of six miles per hour,

it took them 62 days to make the trip

we can do today in about six.

Fast forward to World War II, and General Eisenhower,

impressed with the early version of the German autobahn,

realized the importance of a cross country highway system

for our national defense.

And in 1956, now as president,

he signed the National Interstate and Highways Act,

which established more than 41,000 miles of super highway.

- They consumed more than one billion pounds of explosives.

[exploding]

2.3 billion tons of cement and crushed rock.

- [Adam] The interstate's original length

is pretty close to its current size today

of nearly 47,000 miles, enough to get within 3000 miles

of being able to circle the earth twice.

At the start of the day, this Freightliner

was just a collection of 3000 individual parts,

but now I'm actually riding in it

as Eric steers it towards one of its final stops

on the way to becoming a full fledged Freightliner.

- This truck just came off the line.

This is one of the final tests that we go through.

So we make sure that there's no water leaks

anywhere in the truck.

Don't open a window.

- No, I'm hoping the windows are closed.

I wanna batten all hatches.

America's trucking industry employs over 8 million people

that work hard to make sure that our cargo

has an on-time delivery rating of 95% or more,

but to be able to deliver our goods so promptly.

Truck drivers and their rigs have to operate

under some extreme conditions when they need to make miles,

from notoriously icy roads in North Dakota,

high winds in Wyoming and flash flood plains in Texas,

these trucks have to withstand it all.

And this machine called the water halo test

is built to put the weatherization of these trucks

through its paces.

- [Man] We testing the pop and the sides and all the seams,

the doors and all that.

- So it's like if you're driving torrential downpour.

- [Man] Exactly, this is the worst storm

you would ever, ever wanna drive through.

- Please hold. [laughs]

please hold. The whole truck is rumbling

its literally shaking the truck.

and these things weigh tones.

So I guess this is a pass.

- [Man] This is a pass. [laughs]

- That was amazing.

- [Adam] This and the rest of Diamond's latest trucks

that roll off the line today will join the fleet of trucks

dedicated to moving our goods across the country.

But before there were trucks

to help transport the things we buy,

there were trains.

- Trains, totally shaped the history of the United States

because they allowed goods to be transported

for the first time across the entire country.

- [Adam] Starting with steam engines in the 1800's,

locomotives gradually updated

from steam, to diesel, to electric.

Currently the fastest passenger train in America

is Amtrak's acela which can reach speeds

of 150 miles an hour

And all the way across the world.

There's a train that's even faster, the Maglev.

- Maglev trains don't have wheels.

Instead they have a set of extremely powerful magnets.

There's one set of Magnets in the train

and another set of magnets in the track,

those magnets, repel each other.

And that actually levitates the train

just a little bit off the track,

and that allows you to reduce the slowing force of friction

so that the train can go really fast.

- [Adam] And we do mean fast.

The fastest Maglev train in the world,

topped-up at 375 miles per hour.

That's fast enough to get you from Miami

to New York in under four hours,

but there's potential and even more futuristic

and faster train in the works here in the U S.

[upbeat music]

- Well Maglev eliminates the friction

between a trains wheels and the track.

The train is still slowed by friction

with the air around it.

So the idea behind Hyperloop is to eliminate that air,

pods carrying passengers would travel

through huge vacuum tunnels

that had most of their air removed.

And eventually the Hyperloop pods will be able to travel

at 670 miles per hour.

- [Adam] Originally the brainchild of Elon Musk,

Virgin has since taken over development

and plans to launch in 2030.

So by then at the speeds we're talking about,

you can travel between New York and DC in 20 minutes,

but even if our freight railways

never reached those kinds of speeds, many still argue,

they're the best in the world

covering 140,000 route miles

by far the most, anywhere around the globe.

OutWest no other American railroad better embodies

the might of our railways than Union Pacific,

chartered in 1862 when president Abraham Lincoln

signed the Pacific railway act

with the goal of connecting the west

with the rest of the country by rail.

And the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869

when union Pacific's line connected

to central Pacific line in Utah,

creating a boon of trade and population growth

beyond the Eastern seaboard.

Today across two different shops among union Pacific's line,

they modernized their current fleet for the future

while also simultaneously operating

their iconic Big Boy locomotive.

One of the last that is still able to ride the rails.

- Big Boy locomotive were referred to as the 4,000 class,

they were just to right around 610 tons, 133 feet long,

almost 17 feet tall, 11 and a half feet wide.

The modern diesel locomotive is 74 feet long

and just a little over 200 tons.

- [Adam] There were 25 big boys

built exclusively for union Pacific railroad.

The first of which was delivered in 1941

but only eight remain today.

They were built to be able to tow long freight lines

with as many as 125 cars

collectively weighing 3,800 tons

all in one shot over the Wasatch mountain range in Utah.

- At that point, that was a game changer.

The railroad was faced with serious congestion.

There was no way for them to build additional tracks.

They had to find a way to move that amount of tonnage.

And the only solution was

to make a bigger, stronger locomotive.

That's what led to the development

of the Big Boy locomotive.

- [Adam] During world war II,

the Big Boys were massively important in moving materials

for the war effort and are acclaimed

for their wartime contributions.

After the war, the Big Boys ran until 1961,

making them one of the last steam locomotives

to go out of service.

And what replaced them?

Diesel engines, and further down union Pacific's line

is the shop where a team of 175 people,

do some literal heavy lifting to keep their active fleet

of more than 4,600 locomotives operational,

while adding a touch of modern innovation as well.

- [Man] The first thing we do

when we bring the unit into the shop

is remove the components that need to come out

to be replaced while it's in the shop.

- The most impressive piece of equipment we have

is the 250 ton crane, which can lift the entire locomotive.

- [Adam] Diesel locomotives can weigh more than 200 tons

that's heavier than the statue of Liberty.

So this crane has to use nearly all of its lifting power

and the most important upgrade these trains get

brings them into the 21st century.

- PTC stands for positive train control

and has given us the ability to know where our trains were

anywhere in the country at all times.

- [Adam] Positive train control uses technologies

across the telecommunication spectrum

to monitor each train's location

speed and distance for potential hazards

and can pinpoint where trains are within 11 feet

of their actual location in real time.

But its biggest benefit is safety.

Since the technology can automatically slow

or stop the train to avoid collisions or derailments.

- [Dana] American needs us, there's no way

goods get from point A to point B without us.

And so the, what we build, what we put back together

gets those goods from point A to point B without fail.

- [Adam] Planes, trains and automobiles,

by now we're familiar with these common modes of transport

each day, roughly 100,000 flights take off

at land around the world.

Amtrak can transport nearly 90,000 passengers

and automobiles have consumed

as much as 392 million gallons of fuel, a record in 2018.

But throughout history, all the way up to present day,

you could still find some unique ways that people get around

across the globe.

In north America, dog sleds were once commonplace

as the most effective means,

of crossing snow covered terrain.

And they proved their worth in 1925.

When they came through to deliver critical medicine

to an epidemic stricken town in Alaska.

- It was in the dead of winter,

so the best thing they could do

is set up a dog sledding relay

that would begin at 700 mile trip to Nome.

And that five day relay brought medical supplies,

which treated people that had the outbreak

and saved many lives.

- [Adam] Across the Pacific from Alaska,

the Jeepney is the most popular form of transport in Manila,

the largest city in the Philippines,

if it looks somewhat familiar,

it might be because they got their start after world war II,

when US troops left behind Jeeps,

that were recycled as buses.

- The interesting part is, they have regular routes,

but they don't have regular stops.

So you actually have to tell the driver I'm stopping here

and actually to get in and out of the Jeepney.

They put the benches side to side.

Since it was sort of a quick on and quick off,

they had to keep that aisle clear.

- [Adam] But over in the UK,

something straight out of James Bond has been shuffling

British citizens between Portsmith and the isle of Wight

since 1965, the only commercial passenger hovercraft

in the world.

- The hovercraft is the best way to travel

over the Solent

because the tide is maybe half a mile sometimes,

it actually shoots air below it to create an air cushion.

So the hovercraft is a great way to move over both land

and water and it's an iconic way of traveling in England.

- [Adam] But no matter how humans have gotten

from place to place through the years.

Today, one of the most trusted and time tested methods

for moving cargo around on the road is trucks.

There are around three and a half million truck drivers

that share the road with us today.

And I am finally about to get a taste

of how the Freightliner makes their journeys

as easy as possible

for those lucky enough to drive one.

- Gee, just look at the size of this thing,

you're used to it,

but seeing a bunch of pieces come together,

it was like a puzzle six hours ago.

- [Erik] Absolutely.

- And now it's a Freightliner.

- [Adam] In a matter of hours,

I'm standing in front of a completed

road ready Freightliner.

These cabs alone can weigh up to 20,000 pounds,

but fully loaded trailer and all

they can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds.

- Oh my God, I am really the king of the road now.

Oh, it's like a house,

it's actually bigger than most New York apartments,

this is amazing.

- [Adam] Most truck drivers

cover an average of 2,500 miles on the road each week,

which adds up to an average of 125,000 miles per year.

So it's not hard to see why a spacious cab comes in handy.

[starts engine]

- Ooh.

- With that, now you're in drive

and you gotta take the parking brakes off.

- Wait, you want me to drive it?

- [Man] Absolutely, you're driving.

- [Adam] Man this is awesome. That's the horn, Yeah?

- That's the horn.

- I have always.

[laughs]

Always wanted to do this.

[upbeat music]

[honks the horn]

Oh, that felt amazing. Oh my God.

This is just amazing.

[honks the horn]

Yeah, I could feel it automatically shifting for me.

- So yeah, this is automated manual transmission shift.

It knows how fast we're going. What the engine RPMs are.

It's taking the right gear to be in or what we're doing.

- This truck is smarter than most people I know.

[laughs]

I don't know what I expected when I finally got my chance

of living out the dreams of driving a truck

but I'm glad that it was a Freightliner for the first time

'cause man, this is awesome.

- Fantastic.

- This morning, this truck didn't exist

and now it's this incredible modern marvel of engineering

but there is always a new horizon up ahead,

and the long road awaits.

So get moving America, see you next time.

[honks the horn]

[cheerful music]

[truck beeping] [train bell ringing]