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Interesting to see the automation of truck driving used again as an example in this discussion. From what my dad tells me, the trucking industry is hurting for

• gaius 8y ago
  I can see the use cases for a “road train” of a single human driver operating a convoy of semi-autonomous vehicles. Once co-existence with other road users can be addressed such as splitting and rejoining. I think this is far more likely to be the model than completely automated trucks
• bilbo0s 8y ago
  This is not quite true. What's happened recently is a combination of more effective enforcement on the regulatory side, combined with a ruthless pursuit of efficiency on the industry side. This combination of factors has increased the number of trucking jobs beyond what was historically necessary. (That's right. Ironically, all of the automation being added in the trucking industry has actually increased the number of drivers necessary substantially.) Think what would happen if tomorrow the government said from now on every doctor can see no more than 2 patients per day. (Oh, and by the way, we're installing cameras in every hospital, urgent care, clinic, and private practice office to verify that no one exceeds that limit.) Now imagine that at the same time hospitals said they would no longer work with off site providers of any sort because it increases efficiency to have all of their physicians on site full time. Well, all of a sudden you would need about 6 to 8 times the number of doctors you have today. (At a minimum.) This is somewhat of a simplification, and it doesn't get across the full depth and implications of the changes, but it gives you a good idea of what's happened to the trucking industry over the past few years.
  • pixl97 8y ago
    >Think what would happen if tomorrow the government said from now on every doctor can see no more than 2 patients per day. Well, if doctors were killing patients at the rate truckers were killing other drivers then, yea, hopefully we would. (Honestly tired doctors kill a lot in the US as it is, medical mistakes are the 3rd leading cause of death).
    • bilbo0s 8y ago
      Well, I was just trying to put changes to trucking regulations into an easy to understand form. I wasn't passing judgement on whether or not we need lower doctor/patient ratios. I don't really know enough to give a meaningful yea or nay on questions like that.
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • stephengillie 8y ago
    Automation here prevents underreporting and other abuses - it's regulatory automation, so an alternative would be to hire more regulators to review documents. Automating this unsatisfying work increases the amount of law applied for the same cost.
  • smileysteve 8y ago
    > if tomorrow the government said from now on every doctor can see no more than 2 patients per day I don't see much purpose in the exaggeration; change it to, Doctors must see each patient for no less than 15 minutes; and can only work 8 hour days. Granted, internists with their own practices or in small towns do this already.
• RobertoG 8y ago
  "[..] the trucking industry is hurting for long-haul drivers" Is not that a symptom of not paying enough?
• bigpicture 8y ago
  I can corroborate, but the central issue once again is pay/working conditions. The pricing assumes that long-haul truckers don't get paid much and it assumes that they will drive up against the legal limits and it assumes that they will more or less live in their truck and never see their home. Fixing the pricing to make the working conditions reasonable will simply make long-haul truck uncompetitive with freight railroads. And that is really the solution. If you want to send cargo across the country, put it on a train.
  • cyborgx7 8y ago
    I'm ever more opening my eyes to how much crucial tasks for the functioning of the society are being done by low-paid workers under terrible conditions. We do have alternatives, but the profit motive comes before the quality of life of these people.
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • snarfy 8y ago
    Not all shipping is equal. When I worked for a produce company we shipped via trucks and trains. By far there were many more incidence of produce going bad and having to be thrown out when shipped via train than by truck. Put it on a train, unless it will spoil?
    • bigpicture 8y ago
      > Put it on a train, unless it will spoil? Oh yes, there will always be exceptions. But it will have to cost more. There is no escaping that.
    • repolfx 8y ago
      Why was the train less reliable than the trucks? I'd have thought it would be the other way around. Trucks get caught in traffic, there are more vehicles to break down etc.
    • 8y ago
• volkl48 8y ago
  That'll actually be complimentary. Long-haul trucking is the part that's least desirable for humans AND the easiest to automate. Highway driving is not hard in comparison with the actual local driving part, getting into tight loading docks, dealing with humans giving directions (at the terminals), handling driveways/paths not on maps, and so on. And that's the sort of job that's a better quality of life for humans than long-haul is. Go to the terminal in the morning, make short trips all day, be off work at a normal hour, sleep in your own bed and be with your family at night, just like a normal job. So given that, I actually see trucking as one of the areas where increasing automation may be a smooth transition, especially with the labor shortage in the industry. ------------ The hypothetical middle-term future then, looks like: Humans on either end making the last-mile trips, automation getting trucks between major terminals via highway.
  • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    Where will the hubs be located? Who will own and maintain them? This could end up costing more than just having the truckers drive the long haul.
    • pixl97 8y ago
      >Where will the hubs be located? There are large shipping hubs that already exist. Vast warehouse complexes in most major US cities. >Who will own and maintain them? I would assume the gigantic companies that own fleets of automated trucks. >This could end up costing more than just having the truckers drive the long haul. Why? Two of the most costly things are people and downtime. Trucks with people in them can only drive so many hours a day. Going from hub to hub with only fueling stops would further reduce transit downtime.
    • yourapostasy 8y ago
      > Where will the hubs be located? In the US, all major metropolitan areas have a network of trucker fuel/food/shopping stops positioned at the major truck routes around the metros. The big players are Pilot Flying J and Love's. There might be a play by Berkshire Hathaway to leverage the network of these truck stops into trucking automation hubs, as they intend to purchase 80% of Pilot Flying J by 2023. If we catch news of Pilot Flying J upgrading some of their Net connections far beyond what would normally be needed (say into 10 gigabit ranges and up), and correspondingly investing in Cisco-level WiFi gear (their WiFi is notoriously awful among truckers), that might be a sign of laying in the networking groundwork of a data-intensive hub where they charge the trucking companies for high-speed real-time truck updates at the hub, for example. If we catch news of Pilot Flying J buying a fleet of near Level 5 self-driving cars, then that might be another sign. Reefer trucks sometimes take about 4-6 hours to unload, vans almost as long. If carrying produce it can be 6-12 hours to load. If you switch to a metro-based hub system, then your drivers show up at the hub, and any load longer than the time it takes to drive to the hub, get another load assigned, and get another driver dispatched to the drop/load point, sees the truck arrive with a self-driving car behind it in "little duckling mode", tailing the truck, reducing the problem space for the self-driving programs. Driver positions the trailer, gets in car, goes back to hub for next load. That change converts nearly every load into drop/hooks. This increases profitability by stripping out a ton of dead wait time. Driver wages and quality of life, and corporate profits, can go up in tandem while rates go down for customers. Customers won't be pressured to rush through the load/unload cycle (it can be priced lower than if a trucker is waiting), and trucking companies will have a huge, immediate profit incentive to pressure customers to pay for any trucker time required for helping load/unload contents, and truckers can partake in paid assistance for loading/unloading. An efficient Uber-style dispatch system would be required, because there are options to route drivers in a "duckling car" to go directly to another load in the metro, then drive the load back to the hub, for example; I see a lot of optimization scenarios, all dramatically driving up trucker utilization. Whoever is working on automated long-haul trucking also needs to work on automated drop/hooking at the hubs, so automated rigs can drop off and pick up trailers without human assistance, saving even more time.
• drdeadringer 8y ago
  About a decade ago I had cause to hire a long-haul truck [across the continental US]. At the time, I had come across information about how couples [married, whatever] were a segment of the trucker population; they would truck back and forth together. Is this portion of the trucker population relatively small, and//or have little impact on issues being discussed here?
  • HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    Probably both. My wife has seen 48 states (except Hawaii & Alaska) through the windshield of an OTR truck, because when she was young her father would take her on some of his trips when school was out. He would also go with his wife sometimes. None of that changes anything: the vast majority of trips are still with a single driver alone in the cab. Just because you can have a passenger doesn't make the lifestyle more desirable for most. In fact, I think the drivers who do it the longest are personality types that prefer to be alone.
• mikestew 8y ago
  Few men want to spend days on the road, far from their families and homes But back in the day, it paid well enough to make that sacrifice. I knew families growing up that did okay with Dad was a truck driver and sole bread-winner, probably as well as my UAW-working father. But now, sound like it's crap pay and the job didn't get any easier. And, duh, they can't find anyone to do that job.
• downrightmike 8y ago
  Costs are the threat and the last mile problem. If rail could deliver close or at the last mile, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Rail is way more efficient, except for that last bit.
• ams6110 8y ago
  "the trucking industry is hurting for long-haul drivers" I think that is the story they like to tell, because it gets on the news and leads some people to seek jobs as truck drivers. But I don't think it's really true. I think they have all the drivers they are willing to pay for. If they really had a shortage of drivers, they would pay more to attract more drivers.
  • jedberg 8y ago
    There was an interesting comment on this in a recent government finance report. An owner of a company said, "I'm having trouble filling all my open roles". When asked, "Why not offer more money?", they said, "Because then I'd have to pay all my existing workers more too and I can't afford that. It's cheaper to just pay them all overtime". So this could explain why they won't just pay more -- because some people are already willing to do the work at the current pay, and it's cheaper to have them work more.
    • voidifremoved 8y ago
      There is a difference between being willing to work at the current pay, and tolerating exploitative conditions out of fear of destitution. Which is where UBI comes in as the missing part of a liberal capitalist economy. Until you remove the stick of starvation and homelessness, labour markets cannot respond rationally.
      • jedberg 8y ago
        Agreed. Also not tying health insurance to employment.