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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/mar

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).
- delinka 8y ago
  I could see road-side battery exchange - assistance arrives with fully charged batteries, swaps them for the empty batteries, truck rolls on. Faster than pumping fuel.
- tCfD 8y ago
  Tires blowing out are a much bigger (in terms of simple cost and the thornier problem of schedule optimization and ability to guarantee precise delivery times) and much more common of a problem than mechanical breakdowns. They're also a problem that does not go away with autonomous trucks or electric motors or anything conceivably around the corner, outside of some miraculous development in materials science. As such, a (somewhat) well-organized industry has developed around getting replacement supplies like tires and other accessories to the site of a breakdown as quickly as possible, and this would simply need to be extended to include whatever it is autonomous trucks would require that doesn't touch the road.
  - jpm_sd 8y ago
    Why do tires blow out? Do they have a predictable lifespan? If there is a huge cost savings associated with autonomous driving, could some of those $$$ be put toward more frequent tire changes that prevent blowouts from happening? (edit) Personal injury lawyers assert that it is largely a preventative maintenance issue: http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-truck-tire-blowout.cfm http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-truck-... https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-blowout-crashes-occur/ https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-bl... http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-causes-of-big-rig-tire-blowouts.cfm http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-caus...
    - louden 8y ago
      It is much more than a lack of maintenance. The weight of the cargo, the temperature of the road, the way the cargo is distributed in/on the trailer and manufacture defects can all contribute to blowouts of servicable tires. Those issues also make the lifespan of identical tires vary by thousands of miles traveled. While replacing tires more frequently would reduce the number of blowouts, it would be very wasteful. In the US, DOT inspections are frequent and they look at the tires to make sure they are in good condition.
      - crazynick4 8y ago
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  * Mechanical: pull over and wait for a service truck. Not much different from what happens now. Likely fewer issues overall as these trucks will probably be electric. * Route planning isn't that hard of a problem; design the system such that running out of gas/battery is a whatever-sigma chance. Automation means lots and lots of data about the roads to base this on.
rtkwe 8y ago
I think the first couple rounds of autonomous trucking will be to basically eliminate long haul trucking and a transition to a model where humans drive the last 50-100 miles from a hub to the customer where most of that knowledge is most needed.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Of course, in the US, a lot of true long-haul trucking shifted to trains a long time ago. A lot of shipping is now multi-modal.
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    Refrigerated loads often do not ship multi modal. My understanding is that refrigeration is not guaranteed, and that time to the customer is very important.
tCfD 8y ago
Although the paperwork problem will definitely be an under-appreciated obstacle to making these systems work, autonomous trucks will eliminate a significant portion of it because there will no longer be any such thing as hours of service, or mileage logging for drivers. Ditto for licenses, drug tests, background checks, and most of the common kinds of moving violations. and scheduling has its own set of paperwork which is a colossal nightmare because you are dealing with the always conflicting priorities of drivers on one side and customers on the other. The major logistical obstacle outside of paperwork will remain to be resolving last-mile issues, but that has already been resolved long ago for containerized railroad freight: a.k.a. autonomous trucking technology from the 1800s. There's been a century's worth of time to solve this, manifested in the form of short-haul service providers known as intermodal draymen who pick up the container from a designated landing area (a rail yard) and haul it the last mile. This can easily be adapted to autonomous trucking logistics.
- Animats 8y ago
  Between the Flexport guy who's always on here, and Uber Freight, someone will probably get the paperwork automated. After all, DHL, UPS, and FedEx already have that problem solved.
delinka 8y ago
I'm expecting an autonomous truck to be a supplement to a driver rather than a replacement. It becomes a tool to make him more productive for his customers.
- gnusci 8y ago
  I support your statement 100%. Lets analyze a simple problem. What happen if you throw a mannequin in front of a truck? If it stop then there is a very easy way to pirate them. Human are always needed in very complex decision making circumstances.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Pirating trucks with humans in them is not much more difficult. Humans also tend to stop when you put obstacles in front of them and I doubt they would defend their cargo if a gun is waved in front of them. The reason that highway robbery is not common today is not because it's difficult to do.
    - gnusci 8y ago
      Of course, there is nothing new in on the road pirating trucks. However, the question is what an autonomous truck will do?
      - canhascodez 8y ago
        The autonomous truck will trigger an alert when it's forced to make an emergency stop, and continually record its surroundings and broadcast its position. A watchdog process will note that the vehicle has failed to reach the next waypoint in the expected amount of time.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Sure, and that could happen now, but if I had to stereotype drivers(which is how criminals frequently operate), truckers would be the last kind of person I would want to mess with. Surely a huge percentage of truckers, especially overnight truckers, are packing heat.
samstave 8y ago
I think that a hybrid should be developed: Trucks autonomously deliver themselves between cities/ports -and there are a bunch of Drivers at the local hub who then pickup the truck and do "last mile" delivery operations. People shouldnt need to drive from Oakland to Reno, as an example. Then, truckers could go to work 9-5 and be home for dinner with their families every night.
- nacs 8y ago
  This scenario is described in the article as "Highway exit-to-exit automation". It's also what Uber did in the past [1] and I've heard Tesla is going to be doing something similar for their Megafactory deliveries. [1]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/uber-self-driving-trucks-delivering-freight/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/uber-self-driving-trucks-...
  - samstave 8y ago
    Ah, Good. Thanks for that.
- sgillen 8y ago
  I like that idea too(and as people point out several companies are experimenting with this idea). It would also be interesting to set up "remote drivers" for the last mile. The truck itself can still be unmanned and someone drives the truck remotely for the last mile (or when problems crop up). Since the infrastructure would already be there for autonomous driving, remote driving is a relatively straightforward exercise in engineering I think.
  - ska 8y ago
    That model is also covered in the article.
- ErnestedCode 8y ago
  I believe this will be the first iteration of autonomous truck driving. > Then, truckers could go to work 9-5 and be home for dinner with their families every night. You seem to indicate this will be good for the drivers, but it won't be. The bad news is you couldn't take all of the current drivers and consolidate them into "last mile" drivers. There will be A LOT more physical work involved since drivers will no longer be sitting and driving 99% of the time. And there will be fewer hours driven by humans, so it will truly be survival of the fittest. Old and less able-bodied drivers will be forced to retire or switch careers. It will probably be impossible for someone new to get into the industry and to be honest, it would be a poor career move to try to get into the industry at this point. The drivers that remain will continue to fight tooth and nail to block full autonomous driving, but every hour they spend fighting is an hour less that they will be earning money in a career that will eventually be extinct. It sucks that so many people will lose their livelihoods, but it really is inevitable. And big retail stores will die, too, unless they are automate the whole "last mile" delivery. Loading docks and warehouses will have to adapt or the retailers/shippers will die, too.
Johnny555 8y ago
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 Isn't that what we were told about taxi services when Uber started taking over? But it turns out that people prefer a driver who follows a GPS and you know he's 5 minutes away than a more expensive local driver that might come in 5 minutes or might come in 50 minutes (or not at all), all you know is that the dispatcher said "He's on the way" optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. Most of this seems like something logistics software can do - and it can optimize across a fleet instead of optimizing for a driver. 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. Also things that the business office would do -- if you want the cheap automated truck delivery, you'll pay on time and have your paperwork ready. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc Again, this is something that shippers would change if they want the automated truck delivery. They can either pay to make their dock automated-truck-accessible, or they can pay a human driver to back it in. And those human drivers will become more scarce and expensive as time goes on. 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. Initially, sure, but long term, economics will win out.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kazinator 8y ago
  > Isn't that what we were told about taxi services when Uber started taking over? Uber drivers are people with local knowledge, like taxi drivers. Uber's experiments with auto-pilot driving have killed.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    Not around here -- most of my drivers have been from well outside of the area -- the people that need to supplement their income by driving for Uber are pretty much the same set of people that can't afford to live in the area. They have a general working knowledge of the area, but tend to work such a large area (i.e. the entire SF Peninsula) that they don't have detailed knowledge
konschubert 8y ago
Truck drivers often work for freight forwarders who arrange the loads for them, including combining loads and shielding them from unreliable customers. All that knowledge about waiting times, load times, customer reliability etc. can be gathered by the freight forwarder. Traditional freight forwarders are having trouble with this because they often don't have the technology to manage and understand this data. Instead they rely on lots of personnel and deep hierarchies including many subcontractors. At sennder.com we're trying to change this.
smileysteve 8y ago
Some of these cases apply much more to contractor truckers (majority), but apply less to employee truckers (think Publix, Kroger, USPS) where the paperwork is already finished, no upsell opportunities, another office handle payment (even with contractors this is becoming a front office thing). > require serious judgement to be able to maneuver large trucks around them I think this is one aspect you get incorrect. With LIDAR and SONAR a computer can know an exact distance from corner to corner, can know and set the exact angles to hit a spot; while with a different set of eyes looking at a tree beside you. We already have consumer cars that have proximity warnings and trailer paths.
Pxtl 8y ago
You could still have a single driver/coordinator leading a convoy of autonomous trucks and handling all the duties that would normally be done by each individual driver. One driver per 5 trucks is still downsizing 80% of drivers.
OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago
I think you're vastly underestimating the enormous pressures that will be put to bear on solving literally every other problem if it means even the possibility of eliminating a majority of the drivers entirely and their huge cost to the bottom line which in modern days is placed almost literally above all other aspects of the business even to the detriment of the fundamental service being provided as long as it's bearable by the market.
a3n 8y ago
Everything and more on that list is true. However, the move to autonomous Trucking will start with the larger trucking companies, and all of the decisions about how to get a load which loads to take etc etc are made by the company not the driver.

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).
delinka 8y ago
I could see road-side battery exchange - assistance arrives with fully charged batteries, swaps them for the empty batteries, truck rolls on. Faster than pumping fuel.
tCfD 8y ago
Tires blowing out are a much bigger (in terms of simple cost and the thornier problem of schedule optimization and ability to guarantee precise delivery times) and much more common of a problem than mechanical breakdowns. They're also a problem that does not go away with autonomous trucks or electric motors or anything conceivably around the corner, outside of some miraculous development in materials science. As such, a (somewhat) well-organized industry has developed around getting replacement supplies like tires and other accessories to the site of a breakdown as quickly as possible, and this would simply need to be extended to include whatever it is autonomous trucks would require that doesn't touch the road.
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  Why do tires blow out? Do they have a predictable lifespan? If there is a huge cost savings associated with autonomous driving, could some of those $$$ be put toward more frequent tire changes that prevent blowouts from happening? (edit) Personal injury lawyers assert that it is largely a preventative maintenance issue: http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-truck-tire-blowout.cfm http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-truck-... https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-blowout-crashes-occur/ https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-bl... http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-causes-of-big-rig-tire-blowouts.cfm http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-caus...
  - louden 8y ago
    It is much more than a lack of maintenance. The weight of the cargo, the temperature of the road, the way the cargo is distributed in/on the trailer and manufacture defects can all contribute to blowouts of servicable tires. Those issues also make the lifespan of identical tires vary by thousands of miles traveled. While replacing tires more frequently would reduce the number of blowouts, it would be very wasteful. In the US, DOT inspections are frequent and they look at the tires to make sure they are in good condition.
    - crazynick4 8y ago
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
* Mechanical: pull over and wait for a service truck. Not much different from what happens now. Likely fewer issues overall as these trucks will probably be electric. * Route planning isn't that hard of a problem; design the system such that running out of gas/battery is a whatever-sigma chance. Automation means lots and lots of data about the roads to base this on.

rtkwe 8y ago

I think the first couple rounds of autonomous trucking will be to basically eliminate long haul trucking and a transition to a model where humans drive the last 50-100 miles from a hub to the customer where most of that knowledge is most needed.

ghaff 8y ago
Of course, in the US, a lot of true long-haul trucking shifted to trains a long time ago. A lot of shipping is now multi-modal.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  Refrigerated loads often do not ship multi modal. My understanding is that refrigeration is not guaranteed, and that time to the customer is very important.

tCfD 8y ago

Although the paperwork problem will definitely be an under-appreciated obstacle to making these systems work, autonomous trucks will eliminate a significant portion of it because there will no longer be any such thing as hours of service, or mileage logging for drivers. Ditto for licenses, drug tests, background checks, and most of the common kinds of moving violations. and scheduling has its own set of paperwork which is a colossal nightmare because you are dealing with the always conflicting priorities of drivers on one side and customers on the other. The major logistical obstacle outside of paperwork will remain to be resolving last-mile issues, but that has already been resolved long ago for containerized railroad freight: a.k.a. autonomous trucking technology from the 1800s. There's been a century's worth of time to solve this, manifested in the form of short-haul service providers known as intermodal draymen who pick up the container from a designated landing area (a rail yard) and haul it the last mile. This can easily be adapted to autonomous trucking logistics.

Animats 8y ago
Between the Flexport guy who's always on here, and Uber Freight, someone will probably get the paperwork automated. After all, DHL, UPS, and FedEx already have that problem solved.

delinka 8y ago

I'm expecting an autonomous truck to be a supplement to a driver rather than a replacement. It becomes a tool to make him more productive for his customers.

gnusci 8y ago
I support your statement 100%. Lets analyze a simple problem. What happen if you throw a mannequin in front of a truck? If it stop then there is a very easy way to pirate them. Human are always needed in very complex decision making circumstances.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Pirating trucks with humans in them is not much more difficult. Humans also tend to stop when you put obstacles in front of them and I doubt they would defend their cargo if a gun is waved in front of them. The reason that highway robbery is not common today is not because it's difficult to do.
  - gnusci 8y ago
    Of course, there is nothing new in on the road pirating trucks. However, the question is what an autonomous truck will do?
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      The autonomous truck will trigger an alert when it's forced to make an emergency stop, and continually record its surroundings and broadcast its position. A watchdog process will note that the vehicle has failed to reach the next waypoint in the expected amount of time.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Sure, and that could happen now, but if I had to stereotype drivers(which is how criminals frequently operate), truckers would be the last kind of person I would want to mess with. Surely a huge percentage of truckers, especially overnight truckers, are packing heat.

samstave 8y ago

I think that a hybrid should be developed: Trucks autonomously deliver themselves between cities/ports -and there are a bunch of Drivers at the local hub who then pickup the truck and do "last mile" delivery operations. People shouldnt need to drive from Oakland to Reno, as an example. Then, truckers could go to work 9-5 and be home for dinner with their families every night.

nacs 8y ago
This scenario is described in the article as "Highway exit-to-exit automation". It's also what Uber did in the past [1] and I've heard Tesla is going to be doing something similar for their Megafactory deliveries. [1]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/uber-self-driving-trucks-delivering-freight/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/uber-self-driving-trucks-...
- samstave 8y ago
  Ah, Good. Thanks for that.
sgillen 8y ago
I like that idea too(and as people point out several companies are experimenting with this idea). It would also be interesting to set up "remote drivers" for the last mile. The truck itself can still be unmanned and someone drives the truck remotely for the last mile (or when problems crop up). Since the infrastructure would already be there for autonomous driving, remote driving is a relatively straightforward exercise in engineering I think.
- ska 8y ago
  That model is also covered in the article.
ErnestedCode 8y ago
I believe this will be the first iteration of autonomous truck driving. > Then, truckers could go to work 9-5 and be home for dinner with their families every night. You seem to indicate this will be good for the drivers, but it won't be. The bad news is you couldn't take all of the current drivers and consolidate them into "last mile" drivers. There will be A LOT more physical work involved since drivers will no longer be sitting and driving 99% of the time. And there will be fewer hours driven by humans, so it will truly be survival of the fittest. Old and less able-bodied drivers will be forced to retire or switch careers. It will probably be impossible for someone new to get into the industry and to be honest, it would be a poor career move to try to get into the industry at this point. The drivers that remain will continue to fight tooth and nail to block full autonomous driving, but every hour they spend fighting is an hour less that they will be earning money in a career that will eventually be extinct. It sucks that so many people will lose their livelihoods, but it really is inevitable. And big retail stores will die, too, unless they are automate the whole "last mile" delivery. Loading docks and warehouses will have to adapt or the retailers/shippers will die, too.

Johnny555 8y ago

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 Isn't that what we were told about taxi services when Uber started taking over? But it turns out that people prefer a driver who follows a GPS and you know he's 5 minutes away than a more expensive local driver that might come in 5 minutes or might come in 50 minutes (or not at all), all you know is that the dispatcher said "He's on the way" optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. Most of this seems like something logistics software can do - and it can optimize across a fleet instead of optimizing for a driver. 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. Also things that the business office would do -- if you want the cheap automated truck delivery, you'll pay on time and have your paperwork ready. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc Again, this is something that shippers would change if they want the automated truck delivery. They can either pay to make their dock automated-truck-accessible, or they can pay a human driver to back it in. And those human drivers will become more scarce and expensive as time goes on. 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. Initially, sure, but long term, economics will win out.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 8y ago
> Isn't that what we were told about taxi services when Uber started taking over? Uber drivers are people with local knowledge, like taxi drivers. Uber's experiments with auto-pilot driving have killed.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  Not around here -- most of my drivers have been from well outside of the area -- the people that need to supplement their income by driving for Uber are pretty much the same set of people that can't afford to live in the area. They have a general working knowledge of the area, but tend to work such a large area (i.e. the entire SF Peninsula) that they don't have detailed knowledge

konschubert 8y ago

Truck drivers often work for freight forwarders who arrange the loads for them, including combining loads and shielding them from unreliable customers. All that knowledge about waiting times, load times, customer reliability etc. can be gathered by the freight forwarder. Traditional freight forwarders are having trouble with this because they often don't have the technology to manage and understand this data. Instead they rely on lots of personnel and deep hierarchies including many subcontractors. At sennder.com we're trying to change this.

smileysteve 8y ago

Some of these cases apply much more to contractor truckers (majority), but apply less to employee truckers (think Publix, Kroger, USPS) where the paperwork is already finished, no upsell opportunities, another office handle payment (even with contractors this is becoming a front office thing). > require serious judgement to be able to maneuver large trucks around them I think this is one aspect you get incorrect. With LIDAR and SONAR a computer can know an exact distance from corner to corner, can know and set the exact angles to hit a spot; while with a different set of eyes looking at a tree beside you. We already have consumer cars that have proximity warnings and trailer paths.

Pxtl 8y ago

You could still have a single driver/coordinator leading a convoy of autonomous trucks and handling all the duties that would normally be done by each individual driver. One driver per 5 trucks is still downsizing 80% of drivers.

OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago

I think you're vastly underestimating the enormous pressures that will be put to bear on solving literally every other problem if it means even the possibility of eliminating a majority of the drivers entirely and their huge cost to the bottom line which in modern days is placed almost literally above all other aspects of the business even to the detriment of the fundamental service being provided as long as it's bearable by the market.

a3n 8y ago

Everything and more on that list is true. However, the move to autonomous Trucking will start with the larger trucking companies, and all of the decisions about how to get a load which loads to take etc etc are made by the company not the driver.