9 ms·

Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker

79 points by lawrenceyan 8y ago

shiftoutbox 8y ago
NO, not they are not, stop spreading this bullshit.
TekMol 8y ago
...truck makers racing to build autonomous trucks. This trend has led to dozens of reports and news articles suggesting that automation could effectively eliminate the truck-driving profession. Could you beat around the bush more then this? 'trend' 'suggesting' 'could' 'effectively' Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be gone. The rest of the article seems similarely bloated. With it's scenarios and diagrams and stuff.
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  The intended audience is social policy wonks, not HN geeks.
- exhilaration 8y ago
  Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be gone. Not for a 100 years, don't believe the self-driving hype. That's what the rest of the article is about, the long distance highway truck driving jobs will (mostly) disappear but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come. This. Someone has to wheel around that pallet jack loaded with beer. Someone has to hand the clipboard and pen to the person signing for the delivery. Someone has to tarp the load. At some point the tech will get good enough, a switch will flip and meat based steering wheel holders sitting in front of dry vans on interstate highways will be replaced with semiconductor based steering wheel holders. Everything else will change much more slowly.
  - ska 8y ago
    city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come. This is the most likely scenario, true, but also that those jobs and working conditions will likely get worse over time.
thesimp 8y ago
I'm by no means an expert on this, but I do follow some trucking vlogs on youtube, but it amazes me how inefficient the loading and unloading process is. Sometimes truckers have to waiting many hours just to get a place at a loading dock and then again many hours just so that a dedicated team can unload the trailer. What a waste of driver, truck, and trailer resources. The autonomous truck will most likely happen but my prediction is that the real revolution will be automated loading/unloading. And the automated forklifts will unload into fully automated warehouses. And fully automated pickers will pick orders for delivery to your doorstep via fully automated drones. And driven from the doorstep to your fridge by a cargo roomba...
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >What a waste of driver, truck, and trailer resources You think it's bad at face value, try considering it in the context of the DOT's rules on working hours.
  - dmckeon 8y ago
    and the impact of electronic logbooks - drivers who could have driven an extra hour on Monday and an hour less on Tuesday now have to match their route and good stopping places with the DOT hours structure, or face penalties for violations. For a person driving a car, a penalty could be a fine and point(s) against their license, but for a commercial driver, loss of their CDL would mean changing careers.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      All of the elogs are data mined big brother style. Guys who run the same route with the same cargo every week and usually get waved through weigh stations get stopped and checked out because they decided to take their bathroom break on a different leg of the route.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Instead of punishing the individual driver (which is what's done), ought to heavily punish the company instead. Right now, a driver can get threatened and written up if they refuse to drive, even if they would be breaking the law. There's no repercussions for a company to process through drivers. If instead the DOT focused on the companies, they could turn the companies themselves into enforcers as well of the law. The only group that could fall through the cracks are owner/operators. They would still have a justification and reason to skirt the law and fake the logbooks.
comonad-colaboy 8y ago
Can anybody expand on the link between autonomous car driving vs autonomous truck driving in terms of challenges faced. If they are similar, not sure why there is this kind of forecasting seeing how autonomous car driving is pretty much far from over or even usable. If they are vastly different, I don't imagine trucking is any easier than cars (maybe it is?)
- im_down_w_otp 8y ago
  For trucking, solving less of the total problem is still immensely valuable. For example, being able to do simple platooning on freeways and having a driver available to navigate complex or congested environments can still provide significant commercial benefits in cost & efficiency. This isn't as much the case for autonomous passenger vehicles. Additionally, the safety and compliance standards are different. For instance, ISO 26262 only applies to passenger vehicles.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Depends on where the truck is driving. If we restrict them to highway or designed hubs off of highways the problem of trucks isn't much harder than cars. When we start talking about maneuvering in smaller areas like city streets and receiving areas at the destination it's definitely somewhat harder just because there's so much more vehicle to handle and keep track of. One reason to think it'll happen much quicker in trucking is because the economic incentive is much higher for a trucking company to replace it's drivers than for a single person to use an autonomous car.
- civilitty 8y ago
  The difference is in economic incentives, not necessarily challenges. Driving a truck is definitely more difficult than a car but well within the ballpark of any self-driving technology capable of autonomous city driving. However, while the average consumer won't pay an extra $10-??k for a first generation self driving car that can't navigate their daily commute, a trucking company will glady pay an extra $50-???k for a first generation self driving truck that can only drive on highways to distribution centers if it means eliminating the human driver. The latter is as much as 50% of the operating cost of transportation, even when long haul trucking, so as long as capital and maintenance costs are comparable there is a lot more room to profit off of each sale. Even if it takes autonomous cars many more decades years to become an every day consumer item, autonomous trucks will likely be operational much sooner just because there is so much more money to be made in the short term from a few clients like Walmart, Amazon, Costco, etc. that don't need a perfect driving experience to benefit financially.
twblalock 8y ago
Driving the trucks is the most obvious part of a trucker's job, but not the only one. They do a lot of other important stuff: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/will-truckers-automated-comments.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/wi... > These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn how best to navigate through certain areas, they understand how to optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. They also learn which customers pay promptly, which ones provide their loads in a way that’s easy to get on the truck, which ones generally have their paperwork in order, etc. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc and require serious judgement to be able to manoever large trucks around them. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge. I would expect that even if trucks became autonomous, a lot of truckers would survive the transition because people would still need to do a lot of that stuff.
- k__ 8y ago
  Time will tell. Maybe this will break the neck of autonomous trucks, maybe this isn't that big of a deal. Who knows.
- crazynick4 8y ago
  There is also the situation of a truck breaking down and needing repairs, which can happen relatively frequently, given the amount of miles it runs daily. Separately, how would a truck handle running out of gas if it spends too much time stuck in slow-moving traffic? I guess they would need electric human-operated charging stations for autonomous trucks?
  - twblalock 8y ago
    I think they would be electric, but they could run out of battery.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Both of those can be solved pretty easily, there's already a fairly strong business of roadside assistance and towing for trucks the operating company could either contract with a network of those to provide repair or refueling services or just call one from a list whenever a truck breaks down or runs out of gas (the second should be exceedingly rare).
dmckeon 8y ago
If the “Autonomous Truck Port” model becomes popular, I wonder if we will see a highway-oriented version of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container with a lower tare weight but the same twist-locks and dimensions? This could mean that ATP-to-ATP trip segments would be done by trailers built for containers, so load/unload operations could be automated, and hookup/unhook of trailers to tractors would happen much less often. Also, equipment to handle ocean port and ATP container movements would be similar in specification.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  See the movie Logan, of all things, for a pretty well-conceived (though quietly ominous) take on this.
- tCfD 8y ago
  That is a very good idea, though the development and standardization of the current series of intermodal containers was about a 20-year process, and that's with _enormous_ assistance from Vietnam War military logistics planners, who desperately needed a non breakbulk solution to supply line issues that were not solvable with the tiny conex boxes they had on hand.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Not sure what you're asking for. A huge number of Intermodal containers already travel by truck for part of their route.
  - dmckeon 8y ago
    Intermodal are built to stack 9 units high. I’m looking for a containerization system to replace manual hook-and-drop of box trailers with an automatable load, lock, and drive away process that has a lower tare weight penalty than intermodal. A TEU has a tare weight of 5000 pounds, FEU is ~5500 pounds, which is a lot to carry around if you don’t need to stack units 9 high for an ocean trip.
    - 8y ago
mjevans 8y ago
A better solution would apply a minimum standard of living and benefits to ALL workers - irrespective of the number of hours worked everyone should get benefits (health, sick/vacation 'savings', unemployment) which follow a worker and for which pro-rated jobs at least contribute a pro-rated portion. Also, 'on call' or 'must be available' should be considered at least minimum wage PLUS benefits idle time since the employee is being asked to be on standby and not take other work. Schedules should also be known months in advance so proper planning can be made.
Aloha 8y ago
I think the autopilot scenario listed is the most likely adoption path to autonomous trucks in the short term. I think the proponents of this technology are very optimistic about the adoption timescale. I also see almost no adoption in local trucking in the near future. The platooning mechanism may see more use outside of North America, maybe in the LTL fields here - but it would be a pretty disruptive change in the way that freight is sent and routed compared to current use.
a3n 8y ago
> Many other freight-moving jobs will be created in their place, perhaps even more than will be lost, but these new jobs will be local driving and last-mile delivery jobs that—absent proactive public policy—will likely be misclassified independent contractors and have lower wages and poor working conditions. I'm sure the industry would want that, but I wonder how many people are going to go to the trouble of getting a commercial driver's license for a shit job. Having a CDL is particularly risky, for a number of reasons. For example the blood alcohol content necessary for a DUI is only .04 for a CDL holder, and that's regardless if you're at work or driving your personal vehicle. It's usually twice that in most States. And even if you test below .04, if it's detectable at all law enforcement can ground you for 24 hours. And that won't look good to your employer. For most people, if they lose their license for any reason, they can still figure out a way to get to work. But if you're making your living on your CDL, it doesn't matter if you figure out how to get to work, because you can't work. Depending on your circumstances, it can be quite a lot of trouble and expense to get a CDL. Why go through all that and take that risk, when it's just as easy to be a helper on a roofing truck or a fast food worker.
SEJeff 8y ago
Truck Driver is also the most common job title in more than 1/2 of the US: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-... This would be devastating for some of the poorer states like say KY or MO.
- jdpigeon 8y ago
  Hence the importance of pro-active policy measures. It'll be interesting to see this play out in the next few years as protecting truck driver jobs with regulations should (hopefully?) receive bipartisan support.
nopinsight 8y ago
Would technicians, construction/renovation workers, and the likes be good alternative career paths for the current truck drivers? If so, there should be policy support/subsidy to help train those who wish to shift to these options which, to my knowledge, pay pretty well and will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future (little automation is likely, given the limits of current technology.)
- vlehto 8y ago
  You don't get many good carpenters out of unemployed truck drivers. Good carpenters are born to be good carpenters. That's the problem with most difficult to automate jobs that don't require college degree. They sound like anybody could do it. But there is huge difference between good renovation and bad renovation. The kind of guy who can do good job consistently is rare. The job requires passion and good attitude and personality that matches the job. It's kinda sad how many men are passionate about driving a car. It's bit like how many women used to be passionate about weaving.
  - nopinsight 8y ago
    Since the US might need to build over a million affordable housing units to address its homeless problems, ‘newbie’ builders, carpenters, and other technicians might help to reduce the unit budget requirements to a level which a large quantity could be built within a realistic fiscal constraint. Artisan carpenters/master technicians would still be in high demand but those transitioned to the new careers would serve a different market and needs.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Keep the truck drivers, use the autonomous features to drive while they rest.

79 points by lawrenceyan 8y ago

NO, not they are not, stop spreading this bullshit.

...truck makers racing to build autonomous trucks. This trend has led to dozens of reports and news articles suggesting that automation could effectively eliminate the truck-driving profession. Could you beat around the bush more then this? 'trend' 'suggesting' 'could' 'effectively' Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be gone. The rest of the article seems similarely bloated. With it's scenarios and diagrams and stuff.

jpm_sd 8y ago
The intended audience is social policy wonks, not HN geeks.
exhilaration 8y ago
Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be gone. Not for a 100 years, don't believe the self-driving hype. That's what the rest of the article is about, the long distance highway truck driving jobs will (mostly) disappear but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come. This. Someone has to wheel around that pallet jack loaded with beer. Someone has to hand the clipboard and pen to the person signing for the delivery. Someone has to tarp the load. At some point the tech will get good enough, a switch will flip and meat based steering wheel holders sitting in front of dry vans on interstate highways will be replaced with semiconductor based steering wheel holders. Everything else will change much more slowly.
- ska 8y ago
  city truck driving jobs that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come. This is the most likely scenario, true, but also that those jobs and working conditions will likely get worse over time.

thesimp 8y ago

I'm by no means an expert on this, but I do follow some trucking vlogs on youtube, but it amazes me how inefficient the loading and unloading process is. Sometimes truckers have to waiting many hours just to get a place at a loading dock and then again many hours just so that a dedicated team can unload the trailer. What a waste of driver, truck, and trailer resources. The autonomous truck will most likely happen but my prediction is that the real revolution will be automated loading/unloading. And the automated forklifts will unload into fully automated warehouses. And fully automated pickers will pick orders for delivery to your doorstep via fully automated drones. And driven from the doorstep to your fridge by a cargo roomba...

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>What a waste of driver, truck, and trailer resources You think it's bad at face value, try considering it in the context of the DOT's rules on working hours.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  and the impact of electronic logbooks - drivers who could have driven an extra hour on Monday and an hour less on Tuesday now have to match their route and good stopping places with the DOT hours structure, or face penalties for violations. For a person driving a car, a penalty could be a fine and point(s) against their license, but for a commercial driver, loss of their CDL would mean changing careers.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    All of the elogs are data mined big brother style. Guys who run the same route with the same cargo every week and usually get waved through weigh stations get stopped and checked out because they decided to take their bathroom break on a different leg of the route.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Instead of punishing the individual driver (which is what's done), ought to heavily punish the company instead. Right now, a driver can get threatened and written up if they refuse to drive, even if they would be breaking the law. There's no repercussions for a company to process through drivers. If instead the DOT focused on the companies, they could turn the companies themselves into enforcers as well of the law. The only group that could fall through the cracks are owner/operators. They would still have a justification and reason to skirt the law and fake the logbooks.

comonad-colaboy 8y ago

Can anybody expand on the link between autonomous car driving vs autonomous truck driving in terms of challenges faced. If they are similar, not sure why there is this kind of forecasting seeing how autonomous car driving is pretty much far from over or even usable. If they are vastly different, I don't imagine trucking is any easier than cars (maybe it is?)

im_down_w_otp 8y ago
For trucking, solving less of the total problem is still immensely valuable. For example, being able to do simple platooning on freeways and having a driver available to navigate complex or congested environments can still provide significant commercial benefits in cost & efficiency. This isn't as much the case for autonomous passenger vehicles. Additionally, the safety and compliance standards are different. For instance, ISO 26262 only applies to passenger vehicles.
rtkwe 8y ago
Depends on where the truck is driving. If we restrict them to highway or designed hubs off of highways the problem of trucks isn't much harder than cars. When we start talking about maneuvering in smaller areas like city streets and receiving areas at the destination it's definitely somewhat harder just because there's so much more vehicle to handle and keep track of. One reason to think it'll happen much quicker in trucking is because the economic incentive is much higher for a trucking company to replace it's drivers than for a single person to use an autonomous car.
civilitty 8y ago
The difference is in economic incentives, not necessarily challenges. Driving a truck is definitely more difficult than a car but well within the ballpark of any self-driving technology capable of autonomous city driving. However, while the average consumer won't pay an extra $10-??k for a first generation self driving car that can't navigate their daily commute, a trucking company will glady pay an extra $50-???k for a first generation self driving truck that can only drive on highways to distribution centers if it means eliminating the human driver. The latter is as much as 50% of the operating cost of transportation, even when long haul trucking, so as long as capital and maintenance costs are comparable there is a lot more room to profit off of each sale. Even if it takes autonomous cars many more decades years to become an every day consumer item, autonomous trucks will likely be operational much sooner just because there is so much more money to be made in the short term from a few clients like Walmart, Amazon, Costco, etc. that don't need a perfect driving experience to benefit financially.

twblalock 8y ago

Driving the trucks is the most obvious part of a trucker's job, but not the only one. They do a lot of other important stuff: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/will-truckers-automated-comments.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/wi... > These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn how best to navigate through certain areas, they understand how to optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. They also learn which customers pay promptly, which ones provide their loads in a way that’s easy to get on the truck, which ones generally have their paperwork in order, etc. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc and require serious judgement to be able to manoever large trucks around them. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge. I would expect that even if trucks became autonomous, a lot of truckers would survive the transition because people would still need to do a lot of that stuff.

k__ 8y ago
Time will tell. Maybe this will break the neck of autonomous trucks, maybe this isn't that big of a deal. Who knows.
crazynick4 8y ago
There is also the situation of a truck breaking down and needing repairs, which can happen relatively frequently, given the amount of miles it runs daily. Separately, how would a truck handle running out of gas if it spends too much time stuck in slow-moving traffic? I guess they would need electric human-operated charging stations for autonomous trucks?
- twblalock 8y ago
  I think they would be electric, but they could run out of battery.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Both of those can be solved pretty easily, there's already a fairly strong business of roadside assistance and towing for trucks the operating company could either contract with a network of those to provide repair or refueling services or just call one from a list whenever a truck breaks down or runs out of gas (the second should be exceedingly rare).

dmckeon 8y ago

If the “Autonomous Truck Port” model becomes popular, I wonder if we will see a highway-oriented version of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container with a lower tare weight but the same twist-locks and dimensions? This could mean that ATP-to-ATP trip segments would be done by trailers built for containers, so load/unload operations could be automated, and hookup/unhook of trailers to tractors would happen much less often. Also, equipment to handle ocean port and ATP container movements would be similar in specification.

crooked-v 8y ago
See the movie Logan, of all things, for a pretty well-conceived (though quietly ominous) take on this.
tCfD 8y ago
That is a very good idea, though the development and standardization of the current series of intermodal containers was about a 20-year process, and that's with _enormous_ assistance from Vietnam War military logistics planners, who desperately needed a non breakbulk solution to supply line issues that were not solvable with the tiny conex boxes they had on hand.
ghaff 8y ago
Not sure what you're asking for. A huge number of Intermodal containers already travel by truck for part of their route.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  Intermodal are built to stack 9 units high. I’m looking for a containerization system to replace manual hook-and-drop of box trailers with an automatable load, lock, and drive away process that has a lower tare weight penalty than intermodal. A TEU has a tare weight of 5000 pounds, FEU is ~5500 pounds, which is a lot to carry around if you don’t need to stack units 9 high for an ocean trip.
  - 8y ago

mjevans 8y ago

A better solution would apply a minimum standard of living and benefits to ALL workers - irrespective of the number of hours worked everyone should get benefits (health, sick/vacation 'savings', unemployment) which follow a worker and for which pro-rated jobs at least contribute a pro-rated portion. Also, 'on call' or 'must be available' should be considered at least minimum wage PLUS benefits idle time since the employee is being asked to be on standby and not take other work. Schedules should also be known months in advance so proper planning can be made.

Aloha 8y ago

I think the autopilot scenario listed is the most likely adoption path to autonomous trucks in the short term. I think the proponents of this technology are very optimistic about the adoption timescale. I also see almost no adoption in local trucking in the near future. The platooning mechanism may see more use outside of North America, maybe in the LTL fields here - but it would be a pretty disruptive change in the way that freight is sent and routed compared to current use.

a3n 8y ago

> Many other freight-moving jobs will be created in their place, perhaps even more than will be lost, but these new jobs will be local driving and last-mile delivery jobs that—absent proactive public policy—will likely be misclassified independent contractors and have lower wages and poor working conditions. I'm sure the industry would want that, but I wonder how many people are going to go to the trouble of getting a commercial driver's license for a shit job. Having a CDL is particularly risky, for a number of reasons. For example the blood alcohol content necessary for a DUI is only .04 for a CDL holder, and that's regardless if you're at work or driving your personal vehicle. It's usually twice that in most States. And even if you test below .04, if it's detectable at all law enforcement can ground you for 24 hours. And that won't look good to your employer. For most people, if they lose their license for any reason, they can still figure out a way to get to work. But if you're making your living on your CDL, it doesn't matter if you figure out how to get to work, because you can't work. Depending on your circumstances, it can be quite a lot of trouble and expense to get a CDL. Why go through all that and take that risk, when it's just as easy to be a helper on a roofing truck or a fast food worker.

SEJeff 8y ago

Truck Driver is also the most common job title in more than 1/2 of the US: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-... This would be devastating for some of the poorer states like say KY or MO.

jdpigeon 8y ago
Hence the importance of pro-active policy measures. It'll be interesting to see this play out in the next few years as protecting truck driver jobs with regulations should (hopefully?) receive bipartisan support.

nopinsight 8y ago

Would technicians, construction/renovation workers, and the likes be good alternative career paths for the current truck drivers? If so, there should be policy support/subsidy to help train those who wish to shift to these options which, to my knowledge, pay pretty well and will continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future (little automation is likely, given the limits of current technology.)

vlehto 8y ago
You don't get many good carpenters out of unemployed truck drivers. Good carpenters are born to be good carpenters. That's the problem with most difficult to automate jobs that don't require college degree. They sound like anybody could do it. But there is huge difference between good renovation and bad renovation. The kind of guy who can do good job consistently is rare. The job requires passion and good attitude and personality that matches the job. It's kinda sad how many men are passionate about driving a car. It's bit like how many women used to be passionate about weaving.
- nopinsight 8y ago
  Since the US might need to build over a million affordable housing units to address its homeless problems, ‘newbie’ builders, carpenters, and other technicians might help to reduce the unit budget requirements to a level which a large quantity could be built within a realistic fiscal constraint. Artisan carpenters/master technicians would still be in high demand but those transitioned to the new careers would serve a different market and needs.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Keep the truck drivers, use the autonomous features to drive while they rest.