By Paul Berger
The first time Dakota Shearer drove a Tesla Semi truck he took a wrong turn just outside Sparks, Nev., and got stuck on a bend that was too tight for his 40-foot trailer.
Normally, Shearer would reverse out of a jam by getting out of the truck several times to check his position in the road. But Shearer was seated in the center of the cab, eliminating the right-side blind spot, and he was flanked by screens showing every object around his tractor-trailer.
"I backed right out of there, no problem. It's like I'd never done it in the first place," Shearer said. "That right there showed me that the technology the Tesla has makes a big difference."
Shearer is among the few American truckers to drive a pilot model Semi.
This summer, after years of delays, Tesla plans to begin shipping mass-produced Semis from its Nevada Gigafactory. The company is expected to deliver between 5,000 and 15,000 Semis in 2026 before ramping up to 50,000 trucks a year, according to a recent report by Tigress Financial Partners.
Surprisingly, Tesla is winning over a hard-to-please and influential group -- truckers. Truckers who drove it in pilot tests say they loved features including a centered driving position, faster charging and longer range for about $100,000 less than other battery-electric trucks.
When Tesla announced its plans for the Semi nearly a decade ago, it was seen as a chance to change heavy-duty trucking just as its affordable and versatile Model 3 helped popularize electric cars.
But since then, Tesla's focus has shifted to services such as artificial-intelligence, robotics and driverless Cybercabs. And the U.S. automotive and transportation market has largely shifted away from battery power since the Trump administration ended EV subsidies and eased fuel economy regulations.
Angel Rodriguez, a 56-year-old truck driver for Hight Logistics in Long Beach, Calif., recently swapped out a 13-gear diesel truck for a Semi, which is automatic, for a one-month pilot test. "It's just easier on your body," he said of the Semi. "It's less stressful because you're not really having to engage the clutch and the stick shift."
Tesla says the Semi can charge four times faster than other battery-electric trucks, reaching a 60% charge in 30 minutes. That's still slower than filling up the tank with diesel, but not bad for an EV.
Jennie Abarca, co-founder and CEO of King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, Calif., once worked as a truck dispatcher and her husband is a truck driver, so she knows all too well the toll a diesel engine takes on people's lungs and hearing. She eventually wants to swap out King Fio's 27 diesel trucks to create an all-electric fleet.
King Fio already has 11 battery-electric trucks from Volvo and Nikola. But the company limits those trucks to shorter trips to and from local ports because they only have a range of about 225 miles.
The Semi, by contrast, can travel 500 miles on a single charge, according to Tesla. For King Fio that means two or three round-trips a day from Long Beach to warehouses in the nearby Inland Empire or a single round-trip to Las Vegas. She has 20 Semis on order.
"The Teslas change everything," Abarca said. "It opens up a whole different type of delivery that I can make."
California has the nation's busiest container-port complex at Los Angeles and Long Beach and is also ground zero for zero-emission trucking, though its yearslong push to get truckers out of diesel-spewing rigs and into clean trucks has stalled. In January 2025, anticipating opposition from the incoming Trump administration, California dropped a mandate that would have forced carriers to buy clean trucks. The next month, troubled zero-emission truck-maker Nikola filed for bankruptcy, leaving carriers with vehicles that are difficult to maintain and, for hydrogen fuel-cell models, very expensive to refuel.
A prolonged freight downturn, rising labor costs and trade uncertainty caused by tariffs have prompted truckers to delay buying new vehicles. That made them less likely to invest in battery-electric trucks that cost three times more than diesel rigs, take hours to charge and can only travel about 200 miles.
That said, a California program that gives trucking companies grants to buy zero-emissions vehicles sold out quickly when it reopened last year, said Niki Okuk, director of trucks and off-road at Calstart, the nonprofit that administers the program. She credits interest in buying the new Tesla Semi.
Over the past six months, trucking companies in California secured grants totaling $195 million for 1,002 Semis, according to Calstart.
That is about double the number of zero-emission big rigs that currently operate in Southern California, according to data from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Tesla produces two Semi models with ranges of 325 miles and 500 miles. The company hasn't publicly stated how much the Semi will cost and didn't respond to requests for comment. Companies that ordered the vehicles are bound by nondisclosure agreements. But people familiar with the orders say they come in at under $300,000, or about double the cost of a diesel truck.
Battery-electric trucks have fewer moving parts than diesel engines and don't need regular servicing.
Big F Transport employs five mechanics to service more than 40 diesel-powered rigs and a fleet of trailer chassis in Wilmington, Calif. "If we go all EV we will only need one [mechanic] to service chassis," said Geovanny Melendez, the carrier's vice president of operations, who went to see the Semi earlier this month at a ride-and-drive event near the Port of Long Beach.
That said, Robert Braswell, executive director of the American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council, said battery-electric trucks may incur other costs that aren't yet apparent. He said battery-electric vehicles' high-voltage systems require technicians the equivalent of journeyman electricians.
And much like EVs several years ago, public charging infrastructure isn't in place for Semis to make long-haul trips. While EV charging infrastructure grew in 2025, most public chargers have a fraction of the power needed to propel a Semi across America promptly -- let alone fleets of them.
Tesla recently published a map showing dozens of planned public fast-charging sites for Semis across major freight corridors in California, Texas, the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast that are scheduled to open starting this summer.
Shearer got to drive the Semi because his employer, IMC Logistics, ran a one-month pilot with Tesla earlier this year in California.
He said the Semi pulled a 25,000-pound load of dog food up a mountain pass as though it wasn't even there. He loved the smooth acceleration -- and the attention.
"The kids used to roll by and they'd do the arm thing to get you to honk the horn," Shearer said. "And now it's all just cellphones and taking pictures."
Write to Paul Berger at paul.berger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 19, 2026 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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