Will automation put an end to the American trucker?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/10/american-trucker-automation-jobs

by ranit • 9 years ago

137 176 9 years ago

"Then what you have is a truckers’ lounge with 20 or 30 guys standing around getting paid."

THAT's the error: those guys aren't getting paid anything to stand there. They get paid by the mile. Making them wait is benefiting the warehouse, and costing THEM.

SomeCallMeTim2• 9 years ago

Yeah. My wife has a friend who's a long-haul trucker. He gets profoundly disrespected by the current system, including showing up at 8AM to an appointment and being made wait all day, and sometimes into the next day, for his truck to be unloaded/loaded and ready for him to take.

And he's paid nothing for that. There's no penalty at all for wasting the trucker's time. I cite this as evidence that the truckers have no effective lobbying body, and therefore will in fact lose most of long-haul jobs over the next 15 years.

themaninthedark• 9 years ago

http://www.getloaded.com/load-board-blog/post/Whats-the-Best...

It looks like your wife's friend needs a better broker because all the companies we deal with charge us.

Our shipper won't schedule a truck unless we know that the load is ready due to how steep the fees can be.

When we shipped some equipment to a major trade show, they try to schedule it so that the truckers have a minimum wait but the show will also pay the detention fees back if they were the source of the delay.

2by4• 9 years ago

Suggest change title from tracker to trucker.

ranit2• 9 years ago

Thanks for noticing. Unfortunately, I cannot change the title anymore … or don’t know how.

dang• 9 years ago

Fixed - thanks.

observation• 9 years ago

The automation of vehicles is taken to strongly imply robotic devices elsewhere in society.

Apart from more sophisticated robot hoovers, lawn mowers I don't think that is necessarily so.

Hoovers and mowers are safe because they are small, light, low to the ground and constrained to floors and lawns.

Vehicles, fast, heavy, high, are in a controlled environment.

Other controlled enviroments like factories have already ventured into robotics.

It seems to me that main advantages of automated movement would exist in unstructured environments like streets, shops. The robots I've seen so far have low center of gravity, are heavy so as to inhibit any danger.

What exactly does automated driving do for other unstructured environments?

It is far from clear to me that this is going to be a trifle soon after the roads swarm with autos.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

We don't even have autonomous street sweepers (well defined environment, not allowed to run over stuff) mining dump trucks (not as well defined environment, few things it's not allowed to run over and most of them have reflectors on them) or forklifts to unload trucks (well defined environment, nothing to run into).

I'm not holding my breath for automated trucking.

avar• 9 years ago

Automated mining trucks are already being used: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-...

DoodleBuggy• 9 years ago

Depends, do truckers have a strong political lobby? If no, they'll be in trouble. If yes, then they'll be guaranteed to exist for as long as they are funding lobbyists and politicians.

michrassena4• 9 years ago

In the United States at least, it's going to be devastating. I don't see a bunch of individual owner-operators banding together to protect their livelihoods. As soon as it's cheaper to run automated trucks, they'll get picked off one by one. Probably the best than can be hoped for is laws mandating a person as co-operator in case of emergency. There's also some version of the last mile problem, where people need to be present.

For fully automated trucking, I imagine no one has explored the security implications yet. These vehicles seem far too easy to hijack, redirect, or delay and steal the cargo. Take out the human factor and long-haul trucks are autonomous warehouses roaming the countryside.

tynpeddler• 9 years ago

Autonomous trucks may actually be a little more secure. The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin and truckers are strongly encouraged to not stop in this zone. Many still do though, either for legitimate reasons, or they're working with the thieves. Automated trucking will probably fix this problem. You can have automated trucks moving from secured site to secured site without worrying about exceeding a truckers 11 hour drive limit.

nkrisc• 9 years ago

I could see the last mile problem for trucking being solved by depots on the outskirts of cities where the automated trucks arrive, and human drivers commute and drive the trucks from the depot to their final destinations in the city. I don't know about the economics of it, but it could potentially be beneficial to the health of the human drivers as they wouldn't need to be making long-haul trips, but instead navigating more, but shorter, trips into cities. If this scenario increased the volume of long-haul trips (through automation), it could create demand for more drivers for the last mile trips.

criddell3• 9 years ago

I imagine no one has explored the security implications yet.

I bet they have. Especially insurers.

maxxxxx2• 9 years ago

Truckers are mainly small businesses so they probably have no lobby. The bigger trucking companies that employ these self-employed truckers will happily switch to automatic trucks. They also have the political clout.

Same for farmers. The real small family farmers have no political power. It's the big farms that get laws made for them.

johnward• 9 years ago

What about the teamsters union?

randomdata• 9 years ago

As a small farmer, the government requires that we pay into an industry lobby group each year. All farmers, that is, not just small ones.

But, as a small farmer, I already see how unaffordable automation is. Tractors that are basically self-driving have been commercially available for decades, but it is difficult to pencil out unless you have a lot of acres to spread the costs across. I feel that the same will be true for self-driving trucks. The huge fleets will adopt it immediately, but small guys like me who only have to haul grain a few weeks of the year, it seems more cost effective to just spend some time in the seat.

Time will tell, but history tends to be a good indicator. I don't see truckers going away any time soon.

protomyth• 9 years ago

Given that truck driver is the most popular job in the majority of US States, I get the feeling its going to go beyond having a political lobby. You put that many people out of work in one event and that's going to wreck havoc. Political lobbies are not the only way to exert power.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Truck driving is not the largest employment by major NAICS job classification. Instead you'll find that the ranking puts office & administrative, sales, and food services ahead of all transport. The final column is per-mille, not per-cent, contribution.

    43-0000 Office and Administrative Support Occupations                22026080  156.881
    41-0000 Sales and Related Occupations                                14536530  103.537
    35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations             12981720   92.462
    53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving Occupations                9731790   69.315
    51-0000 Production Occupations                                        9105650   64.855
    25-0000 Education, Training, and Library Occupations                  8636430   61.513
    29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations            8318500   59.249
    47-0000 Construction and Extraction Occupations                       5585420   39.782
    49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations             5456640   38.865
    39-0000 Personal Care and Service Occupations                         4514960   32.158
    37-0000 Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations     4426090   31.525
    15-0000 Computer and Mathematical Occupations                         4165140   29.666
    31-0000 Healthcare Support Occupations                                4043480   28.800
    33-0000 Protective Service Occupations                                3386360   24.119
    17-0000 Architecture and Engineering Occupations                      2499050   17.799
    21-0000 Community and Social Service Occupations                      2019250   14.382
    27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations    1902970   13.554
    19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations                1152840    8.211
    23-0000 Legal Occupations                                             1075520    7.660
    45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations                     463640    3.302

Source: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

Edit: I'm perplexed by the downvotes. Care to explain yourself?

melling• 9 years ago

“Trucking is a $700bn industry, in which a third of costs go to compensating drivers”

That’s enough information to answer the question.

didgeoridoo2• 9 years ago

The approach that Starsky (http://starsky.io/) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile", i.e. the local roads and loading dock work that autonomous vehicles struggle with most. Other advantages include lower fuel costs (driving slower because AVs aren't subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don't need to pay truckers as much if the job is safe and nearby to home).

If the Starsky model ends up dominating, this could all add up to a case where the price of truck transportation drops so much that demand for truck drivers actually increases, possibly even counterbalancing the pressure of individual truckers being able to manage multiple vehicles at once. This would be an example of the "Jevons Effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

jobu• 9 years ago

this could all add up to a case where the price of truck transportation drops so much that demand for truck drivers actually increases

The problem is that local drivers average about half the pay ($30-40k) vs long-haul drivers ($70-80k). Even if there is more demand for local drivers it likely won't offset the wages lost.

didgeoridoo2• 9 years ago

There are a lot of unknowns here. The factors putting downward pressure on trucker salaries are:

- Remote operation of trucks is an easier lifestyle, so more people would be willing to take the job, driving down salaries

- Fewer human truckers are needed per truck on the road, so for a given level of trucking activity, fewer jobs exist

Some potential countervailing factors:

- Price of trucking plummets, potentially jacking up demand (Jevons Paradox) depending on price elasticity of truck transportation

- Managing multiple vehicles may end up being more cognitively challenging than driving a single truck, reducing the pool of available workers and driving up salaries

The values of these parameters (and how they change over time) will be crucial to determining the net impact to trucker salaries and employment numbers. My intuition is that salaries will go down dramatically, employment numbers will go down modestly, and overall trucking activity will expand.

winstonewert5• 9 years ago

The wages aren't "lost", the "saved" money will still be paid to somebody to do something.

tomjen3• 9 years ago

Even so, it will devastate the economies of the places they drive through.

tyingq4• 9 years ago

Truck stops, motels, independent semi repair shops, CB radio and accessories, probably more I'm missing. Oh, yeah, the final death knell for DVD porn.

jabits• 9 years ago

I really don't see why autonomous vehicles couldn't handle the first/last miles soon after mastering the open road. I think only regulation would made this a requirement.

semi-extrinsic2• 9 years ago

For trucks that don't follow the same routes every day (e.g. FedEx/UPS/etc.), even humans frequently have a hard time getting it right. "Oh, no, it's the other side of that bridge that's only for light vehicles. Yes, you'll have to drive around for two miles in heavy traffic to get here. No, it's the entrance on the back facing the tall green building." Etc...

moftz• 9 years ago

Until AI for vehicles massively increases, humans are going to be better at navigating the truck through smaller roads, abiding by weight restrictions that may not already be known about, having local knowledge of the area that AI might not have. Every delivery location is going to be a little different so you would need a really general AI to understand how to just get the truck up to the loading dock (if you are that lucky).

The long haul portion of the journey is much more suited to the AI of today, cars already have enough tech to get this done with pretty good results.

simonh3• 9 years ago

I expect many regular delivery end points will get set up with autonomous vehicle standardised parking bays, with programmed routes in and out added to the AI mapping databases. If you don’t have one of those, you’ll need to pay a premium for driver operated delivery or remote driver guidance.

djrogers3• 9 years ago

One word - teamsters.

WalterBright7• 9 years ago

The long haul stuff should go on rails anyway. It's very wasteful to run it on the interstates. The majority of the fatigue damage to the highways comes from trucks, then there's all the rubber dust, fuel inefficiency, etc.

The trailers should just be picked up and dropped on flatcars, and trucks used for intracity last mile stuff.

zspade• 9 years ago

This comment invariably pops up in these threads; If it was going to, it already would have.. It's too late now.

Would it have been a better solution? Probably, but the investment required (laying down the rails, land buyouts, copious use of emanate domain, political greasing of the wheels, etc...) has always been prohibitive. The gains would be shared between many disparate groups that would need to fund this together, taking years to decades for any ROI - certainly a longer time-frame than most publicly traded, quarterly measured, corporations can afford. At the least this would have required some government subsidization.

With driver-less tech around the corner, returns on this investment for any one company become even more dubious, and thus make it less likely to happen. I think the parent comment here will always get some up-votes, but that is as far as I see this going anymore. Maybe it'd go farther if we threw in words like 'Hyperloop' ;)

ThrustVectoring• 9 years ago

There's very real advantages to long-haul trucking over rail. Shipping time costs logistics operations real money in terms of inventory costs, flexibility, and responsiveness to market conditions. Cargo ships are even cheaper than rail, but shipping costs aren't always the dominant concern. Similarly, some goods get air shipped even with the higher cost of doing so.

Aloha• 9 years ago

It already does - if its longer than 600 route miles, is timed to move slower than 50 mph, its already on the rails, thats what TOFC service is.

wil421• 9 years ago

What makes you think this isn’t already happening?

Norfolk southern runs behind my house and I see semi trailers on top of rail cars all the time. I see UPS trailers on trains almost every time I watch one.

Refrigerated semi trailers are common on trains too. I’m guessing they have food in them.

stefan8r2• 9 years ago

This is Stefan, from Starsky Robotics.

I hear this all the time, and honestly in many cases a truck is the transportation of last resort. If you need 5 shipping containers of goods going from A->B all arriving at Time X; it's probably going by train.

An issue with rail (as pointed out by others) is how to haul the freight from the rail head (rail yard) to the end warehouses, and the extra time it takes to have goods go on two trucks and one train instead of just one truck. The other issue is that in the US it's really hard to hire and retain long haul truck drivers (it turns out most people want to go home each night after a hard day’s work).

Competition to hire drivers is fierce, and driver turnover can be 100%/yr...which means sometimes your drivers don't show up to pull your freight. Rail is also generally cheaper so if you can put your goods on the train you do.

As far as wear and tear on the highway: that's what weigh stations are for. They not only assign usage taxes, they also make sure weight is evenly distributed across the axles to limit damage to the road.

/SSA

sam36• 9 years ago

Don't forget to take into account there's normally only one or two lanes of train traffic that runs right along side of an 8 lane high way.

Much more chance for congestion. I lived right next to a set of tracks once. Trains would regularly sit for over an hour without moving.

notatoad2• 9 years ago

That's almost certainly a temporary effect though - if the trucks are being outfitted with the hardware necesary for full automation, full automation is only a software update away and the pilots will only have a job for the relatively short period where automation isn't good enough to handle that portion of the journey.

felippee• 9 years ago

It's going to be a one hell of a software update...

FussyZeus• 9 years ago

There are a few things I think you've overlooked:

- For one, you're talking about human drivers covering first and last mile, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the route that a truck covers which is why the Starsky model works well, in theory anyway. That means one given driver can do the work of probably a few hundred trucks in their last mile phase, even if they end up with some downtime in the middle, it's not even close to balancing. You're still talking about a possibly slightly larger market being overseen by a much smaller workforce.

- Secondly, this completely ignores what could be the silver medal effect of truck driving becoming automated; the death of millions of small and large businesses that operate basing heavily on the incomes of truckers, everything from truck stops and diners, all the way to motels, specialty truck accessory companies, on and on and on. These are the ripple effects that many people aren't looking at when they're thinking about this, it isn't just trucking, it's one of the last jobs available to you with naught but high school under your belt that earns around $40k. And that's not even going into how many businesses do a ton of business with truckers that earn that wage, which is usually much higher than their neighbors are earning.

- Thirdly, if all trucking is done from various Starsky-like operations, then truckers in general will be moving into more consolidated living conditions. Again trucking is one of the VERY rare jobs that requires minimal training, pays a comfortable wage, and is available pretty much anywhere in the States where there are roads and people who buy products. If you want to work as a software developer, chances are you'll have to move to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Austin, etc. but if you're looking to be a trucker, you can go pretty much anywhere and have fairly solid employment opportunities. For now.

sigstoat2• 9 years ago

Thirdly, if all trucking is done from various Starsky-like operations, then truckers in general will be moving into more consolidated living conditions.

why? if the controls are network traffic, and one driver being right next to another driver doesn't add value, why not spread them across the country? it'll reduce control latency, increase reliability (can't have all deliveries stopping if the fiber to one building is cut), and make it easier to have drivers awake when the deliveries are tending to take place (certainly some locations might take deliveries in the middle of the night, but mostly they're going to happen when businesses and such have employees available to receive the materials.)

Johnny5552• 9 years ago

If you want to work as a software developer, chances are you'll have to move to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Austin, etc

If you're willing to work for truck driver wages ($40K - $70K), you can be a developer in any sizable town in the USA.

mindcrime• 9 years ago

If you want to work as a software developer, chances are you'll have to move to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Austin, etc.

Not that I disagree with your basic point, but that's a pretty narrow view of the software world. There are jobs for developers all over the place, even in podunk towns with a few thousand residents. Granted, that town might have like 3 total jobs for programmers, but a. that's an extreme example and b. "long tail". Consider all the mid-sized cities out there, as well as "non tech hub" big cities and there's plenty of places for programmers to live and work.

Just to illustrate:

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=Buffalo%2C+NY

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=cleveland%2C+oh

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=fargo%2C+nd

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22visual+basic%22&l=Oklahoma+...

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=c%23+&l=Boise%2C+ID

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=chicago%2C+il

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=Cincinnati%2C+OH

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=Phoenix%2C+AZ

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=java&l=Tampa%2C+FL

etc., etc. etc.

dforrestwilson• 9 years ago

Corollary - Why no driverless trains yet?

xur17• 9 years ago

The savings likely aren't worth it. Trains can pull a lot of cargo compared to a truck, so the marginal cost for a driver is a substantially smaller percentage.

avn2109• 9 years ago

They exist, you can find them on e.g. the London underground.

stefan8r2• 9 years ago

There's an initiative to move to autopilot for trains, or Positive Train Control. The US Gov't started the initiative in 2008 after a particularly gnarly train accident which killed 25 people. It was due to be rolled out in 2015 and we're still waiting...

For long-haul rail freight the economics don't matter as much as they do for trucks. 1-2 people can control a 7 mile train as opposed to trucks which have 1 driver per 50' trailer.

/SSA

saym• 9 years ago

There was an ELI5 post the other day with a pretty detailed response[0]

The TL;DR amounts to the braking system and current regulation about when trains are eligible to be automated.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/712012/e...

kuschku2• 9 years ago

They exist for local rail and subways, and with the unification of the European signaling and braking systems, soon they’ll also dominate long-range rail

caf2• 9 years ago

http://www.afr.com/business/mining/iron-ore/rio-tinto-makes-...

sly010• 9 years ago

They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile"

It would make even more sense to employ a "local" pilot with local knowledge for the first and last miles, kind of how tug-boats help large container ships in and out of ports.

caf2• 9 years ago

Harbour pilots actually drive those large ships in and out of port from the bridge.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Parallels also to the rise in the demand for horses after the introduction of the railroad.

The availability of long-haul transport increased transportation volume, but the "last mile" connection from origin/destination to the railroad depot couldn't be accomodated as readily. So: horses and carts.

Variously: Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Vaclav Smil, Energy and World History -- of which there's a heavily revised edition out this year, Energy and Civilization.

foxylad• 9 years ago

If Uber is right about it's autonomous taxis, and Tesla's cars really will be able to come when you whistle, then last mile driving and docking are surely solvable problems.

I'm generally an optimistic person, but I think autonomous driving is going to seriously disrupt our societies. I simply cannot see where the huge workforce of unskilled males driving trucks and taxis is going to be soaked up. The industrial revolution did it last time, but anything you can suggest as a potential equivalent (colonising Mars?) will be demanding smart flexible people - and an awful lot of automated systems.

I'm picking the mass unemployment will lead to civil war in the US (where all those unskilled males have semi automatic guns) and universal basic incomes in more civilised countries.

dchuk3• 9 years ago

The most likely thing (imo) that will happen will be highway trains...there will be a real human driver in the front of the caravan, maybe just in a van or car, and then 1-10 self driving heavy duty trucks behind them. They'll draft off of each other and do 99% of the long haul route in an automated way.

Once each truck is near it's destination, it will peel off of the pack and park itself near the highway, at which point a real driver will hop in and finish the route.

I work in the telematics space, and work with extremely large fleets that you'd all recognize on the highway every day. None of them are afraid of self driving trucks disrupting them any time soon. However, these automated caravans could be their first opportunity to restructure the flow of their capacity across the country.

autokad• 9 years ago

it seems they would need to build additional infrastructure. its my understanding that truckers would already like to caravan behind one another in very long chains (save lots of fuel), but its illegal due to traffic and safety concerns for other drivers.

Terr_• 9 years ago

Too bad that all the "speculative VC dollars" seem to be in trying to jump directly to full-automation of multiple small passenger vehicles.

Now, I've never heard any public figure say this out loud -- so maybe I'm just barking up the wrong tree -- but I think the bandwagon is being pulled by a very particular idea about a market they can try to corner.

Specifically, they're thinking of a future demographic bump in people who are too age-impaired to safely and legally drive themselves. Folks who can't (or won't) pay another human to drive, or move to a location with better public-transit, but who still have enough affluence for a self-driving car.

IMO it explains the bubbly frenzied focus from multiple companies, despite the significant degree of basic research still required.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

Part of the allure of self-driving cars is drastic reduction of traffic deaths. Long-haul drivers are not the one who kill themselves on the road the most; regular people are.

I'm not saying this is the driving force behind focus of companies, but it's an important consideration for many individuals in this space.

petra2• 9 years ago

In these times, you need very little to start a bubble.

WalterBright7• 9 years ago

It just seems bizarre that "highway trains" have to be reinvented alongside railroad tracks.

Chaebixi• 9 years ago

I don't think a rail train could detach a car from the middle without stopping and park it on the side of the track.

dchuk3• 9 years ago

Trains go to many less places than highways do at this point.

malandrew4• 9 years ago

What are the names of some of these companies in the trucking telematics space? Curious to know more about what they track.

dchuk3• 9 years ago

(Not being a jerk) if you just Google "truck telematics" the front page (and ads) are basically the big players. There are many more who you'll never hear about too.

They generally track the Tractor (truck) and Trailer, and also provide regulatory (hours of service) and Dispatch (sending jobs to drivers).

They also do a million other things, but that's the gist.

alacombe2• 9 years ago

The most likely thing (imo) that will happen will be highway trains

It already happens according to legislation. Though, these vehicle are generally limited to 2 trailers, restricted to some loads), if road condition allows it.

tantalor• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_combination_vehicle

rezashirazian• 9 years ago

Everyone talks about truck drivers becoming obsolete once self driving cars take over the road.

What I would worry about are endless number of doctors and surgeons that spent a life time mastering a skill and will just as easily be rendered obsolete by the same technology.

Lawyers too.

wott• 9 years ago

What I would worry about are endless number of doctors and surgeons that spent a life time mastering a skill and will just as easily be rendered obsolete by the same technology.

You mean, because they operate on car crash victims?

Density• 9 years ago

You jest but the vast majority of lawyers in the US practice automotive law.

wbl• 9 years ago

The day we don't need trauma surgeons is a good day.

petra2• 9 years ago

Don't worry about doctors. Political power wins out in the end, and they have tons of it.

For example: for decades they've managed to resist entry of decision-support systems(which were not perfect, but still, an improvement), even though their own error rate is ~1/8.

ams61103• 9 years ago

Pretty much the reason I don't go to the doctor unless I need stitches or am experiencing intolerable pain.

kamaal2• 9 years ago

>Political power wins out in the end

Well actually its economic power. These people just have to pray technology doesn't get cheaper with time.

I remember in the 90s an entire generation of Indian workforce lost jobs overnight, for decades they fought computers and software. They bought in regulations, laws and what not. Unions fought 'computers' tooth and nail. Yes, you read it right- they were against the very use of computers.

When the prime minister called for use of computers in India in the 1980s there was a national strike.

Eventually it became impossible to not use computers without slipping into an economic stone age. People had to give way.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Be careful what you hope for by way of law.

The Jevons Paradox implications of reducing the costs of litigation by one or more orders of magnitude ... terrify me. The more so as reducing costs tends to increase the level of concentration of power.

malandrew4• 9 years ago

I haven't thought of this until now, but it's going to be interesting to see the impact of self driving trucks on human migration. Today many people feel trapped where they live because it's prohibitively expensive to move. Once self-driving trucks are common, the cost of moving across the country should plummet. Imagine being able to move everything in your apartment or home across the country for a few hundred dollars.

kansface2• 9 years ago

I've moved across the country a few times now - I'm not sure the expense of physically moving stuff was ever the largest.

ryandrake3• 9 years ago

They were for me, by far. What other expenses are there?

ams61103• 9 years ago

If you're loading and moving yourself, a U-Haul or similar is not that expensive. I've done interstate moves and the truck rental was never more than a few hundred dollars.

malandrew4• 9 years ago

True, but there is another cost there, opportunity cost. The week you take to drive cross country is a week that you aren't working and earning money. You're no longer paying the truck driver for his time, but you are now using your time. Overall, this self-move approach works for short moves of maybe 1-2 days time, but the moment a move will take more than a weekend, you're disrupting your earning opportunities.

With self-driving trucks, you will be able to move for a few hundred dollars and be able to focus on employment.

kylehotchkiss• 9 years ago

It would be sort of cool if highways could then promote a "goods carrier trucks can only run nightly" rule with this. Of course allowing essential goods trucks to run in daylight

Havoc• 9 years ago

Obviously. Question is how soon.

kirykl• 9 years ago

Just the threat of automated long haul trucking should cause rail freight rates to decrease, ultimately rates will drop dramatically. Last mile is the final holdout for truckers.

alacombe2• 9 years ago

Automation is one thing in fully mapped Mountain View with perfect weather. It's a whole other job when supply lines go through rough terrain, like Canadian western highways in winter... those chains won't get around those tires by themselves, not to mention the risk of mechanical failures.

blt• 9 years ago

Yes, but those surely make up a small proportion of all truck freight traffic.

darkhorn• 9 years ago

"Will automation put end to the European hand writer?" Unfortuantly since Gutenberg's book pressing automation Europe lives in misery.

fucktruckers• 9 years ago

Having almost been seriously injured or killed by truckers more times than I'd like, I fucking hope so.

greggarious2• 9 years ago

The modern airplane is fairly heavily automated, and probably could be piloted from afar. But we choose to mandate a pilot on board.

I suspect a similar situation will play out for trucks.

I suspect that truckers, like pilots, may see wages stagnate and longer hours, but the profession won't disappear anytime soon.

DoubleCribble• 9 years ago

Mu impression is most commercial flights are largely run on autopilot. AFAIK, pilots typically only get involved for takeoff, landing, flight path changes and abnormal events. If last-mile piloting was a thing, I'm sure the airlines would try to cut costs by getting rid of the crew for the auto-pilot segments. It seems trivial for an automated truck to pull off the highway and wait for a trucker to deliver a vehicle, yet impossible for an aircraft to hold at 30k feet and wait for a pilot.

silvestrov• 9 years ago

A huge difference is that when something goes wrong with a truck then the autopilot can just apply the brakes and let the truck come to a halt and wait for help.

That doesn't work with airplanes.

greggarious2• 9 years ago

It seems trivial for an automated truck to pull off the highway and wait for a trucker to deliver a vehicle, yet impossible for an aircraft to hold at 30k feet and wait for a pilot.

I think many people will not like the idea of sharing a highway with an unmanned truck.

I've done my fair share of driving (including a couple cross country drives to SF for internships), and the scariest parts usually involved passing or being in close proximity to semis.

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

Some will be employed driving the wreckers to go get the trucks that flake out and drive off the road.

SubiculumCode• 9 years ago

The freeway is where AI will be first. It is the most controlled driving environment we have. It can be made even more controlled in a fairly efficiently and cheaply. The local city and country roads have a plethora of other issues. Pedestrians, driveways, trees, multitudes of entrances and exits...its a nightmare really.

Give me AI on the freeway, and I'd probably be happy enough.

kibwen• 9 years ago

while truckers are prohibited from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an eight-hour break, a driverless truck can drive for the entire day. This effectively doubles the output of the trucking network at a quarter of the cost.

Interestingly, doubling the throughput of the trucking network would also halve the average lifetime of road surfaces. "The federal government has estimated that a 40-ton, 18-wheel truck causes the same damage as 9,600 midsize cars." http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-0215-sunda...

foolfoolz• 9 years ago

sounds like a great opportunity for the automated road repair industry

Will automation put an end to the American trucker?

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