GM

Apps collaborate to deliver to Ford cars.

An intersection in New Jersey has been deemed the worst for truck bottlenecks, plus Nikola Motor may be adding a purely electric truck; GM and Tesla are working together, and FedEx Express signs on to a new cargo terminal.

General Motors plans to go all-electric in the future but does not expect profits until early next decade; Amazon is all set to move into the last-mile delivery segment; Tesla and Mercedes-Benz might collaborate over electric van development.

New car sales should remain strong next year, said the National Automobile Dealers Association, but one group is warning of trouble on the horizon.

If staying healthy in the car manufacturing industry and supply chain labor force wasn’t complicated enough, there is still the matter of the $51 billion bailout that the American taxpayer paid to save GM a decade ago.

GM is cutting an estimated 15% of its workforce.

The move amounts to 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America. Five plants are up for possible closure.

The credit rating agency says that well-capitalized, risk-sharing joint ventures between incumbent automakers have the best chance of successfully bringing AV products to market safely and at scale.

BNSF announced that former chief executive Matthew Rose will retire from a his role as executive chairman of the largest freight railroad in the U.S. effective next April, and more in Today’s Pickup.

The long-awaited infrastructure plan from the White House is taking shape and could be part of President Trump’s State of the Union speech on Jan. 30, according to Reuters. CNN, however, reports that the plan will not likely be finished by that time due to the president’s travel schedule.

General Motors has advanced its next-generation fuel cell system, which is part of its concept SURUS (Silent Utility Rover Universal Superstructure) platform that was shown last week at the fall meeting of the Association of the United States Army. Whether commercial transportation is willing to adopt fuel cell technology, though, remains a question.

The only group of employees in C.R. England’s 8,000-plus workforce that is part of a union has voted to decertify Teamsters Local 705. Drivers in C.R. England’s Chicago Intermodal division, which represented less than 1% of the company’s employees, voted on Sept. 20 to leave the union.

A Chinese e-commerce company wants to make deliveries weighing as much as 1 ton with drones. JD.com is already delivering smaller packages in rural villages. Also in the news, FMCSA officials will be meeting to discuss regulatory relief for the industry and GM is facing allegations it used defeat devices to bypass diesel emissions regs on its pickups.

While Congress and the states kick around proposals to increase funding for infrastructure, Robert Atkinson, an opinion writer for The Hill, has backed the idea of charging big rigs taxes based on the number of miles they drive.