From Death Valley To Half A Million Dollars: A Decade Of Riding For A T1D Cure

Read the story behind Logistics Leaders for T1D Cure and how a midnight moment inspired a decade of cycling that has raised over $462,000 for T1D research.

Talking Logistics

Jul 09, 2026

Want to cycle 102 miles through Death Valley?

I have to admit, the invitation to spend hours cycling through one of the hottest places on Earth isn’t very enticing.

But 10 years ago, a handful of people answered my call, and the Logistics Leaders for T1D Cure cycling team was born.

The idea came to me in the middle of the night.

It was a cold December night in 2015. I had woken up to test my daughter Hannah’s blood sugar. (She had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 11, four years earlier.) I had a hard time pricking her finger to draw a drop of blood, and when I looked closely, I realized why: her fingertips were scarred from the thousands of finger pricks she’d endured to test her blood sugar — more than 12,000 by my conservative estimate.

I went back to bed and decided then and there that I needed to do something more to help find a cure for this disease.

That’s when a big, audacious idea came to me:

Would You Put Your Freight on a Driverless Truck?

Driverless trucks have been “coming soon” for more than a decade. But recent developments suggest the industry may finally be approaching a new phase. This month, for example, PepsiCo disclosed that it is operating 35 driverless trucks on public roads in Arizona as part of its live supply chain operations.

Back in August 2022, we asked Indago members about testing driverless trucks. At the time, most respondents were not testing the technology. It’s now four years later. Has shipper sentiment changed? Are companies more willing to test or use driverless truck capacity, and what barriers remain to broader adoption?

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