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"Every scientist worth his salt that I know of has read science fiction."
- Greg Bear

Automatic Truck  
  A cargo-carrying vehicle that autonomously drives to the selected destination.  

Pretty early description of an autonomous truck (I don't know of an earlier one).

Then there was a roar and a crash and a burst of daylight. The two fugitives jumped up and ran, knocking over several astonished people who were waiting for packages; their destination was an open door with daylight beyond. Out there was a row of trucks with laundry packages dropping into them from overhead chutes. They were automatic trucks such as are used for making deliveries beyond the pneumatic-tube zone.

They leaped into the foremost truck. Quentin set the switches on impulse for Bay Shore, because that was not where he wanted to go, and they both rolled back into the closed portion of the vehicle. The truck started slowly, gathered momentum, and automatically made its way out of the city. After fifteen minutes of eternity, they looked out. The truck was moving swiftly along a country road. Twilight was gathering rapidly. "We'd better jump out and let it go on," Quentin suggested.

Technovelgy from Mechanocracy, by Miles J. Breuer.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1932
Additional resources -

Compare to the electrotruck from The Corkscrew of Space (1956) by Poul Anderson. Also, see the entries for the automatic automobile from David H. Keller's 1935 story The Living Machine, the Camden Speedster from Robert Heinlein's serialized 1941 novel Methuselah's Children and the Automatic Control Car from Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth (1976).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Mechanocracy
  More Ideas and Technology by Miles J. Breuer
  Tech news articles related to Mechanocracy
  Tech news articles related to works by Miles J. Breuer

Automatic Truck-related news articles:
  - Self-Driving Truck Corridor From Manitoba To Mexico?
  - Patented! Google's Autonomous Delivery Trucks
  - Otto Autonomous Robot Trucks Run Into... Legal Snag
  - Volvo's Autonomous Truck

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