Big trucking companies, scrambling along with their customers to keep up with fast-growing U.S. economic demand, are plowing millions of dollars into technology to build up services as digital freight middlemen.

Dada-JD Daojia has raised $500m from existing backers JD.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. to quicken the growth of its delivery network across China.

Logistics sector hiring kept up a brisk pace in July as delivery firms, trucking companies and warehouse operators added 15,600 jobs ahead of the peak shipping season.

A week after Uber shut down its autonomous truck program a former member of both that effort and Google’s Self-Driving Car project is resurfacing with a robot semi-truck startup that’s hitting the road with $40m in Series A funding.

A truck driver for the Schwebel Baking Co. rolled out of Cleveland toward Rochester, N.Y., on a recent day with a trailer full of freshly-made sandwich rolls and buns. Less than an hour into the run, sensors tied to his tractor-trailer started sending a stream of urgent data messages that led the big rig to turn around and head back to the bakery.