5 ms·

Uh... not sure if that's actually the case. Trains are cheaper and actually faster over a long distance. The optimal way to ship is actually intermodal: ship fo

Uh... not sure if that's actually the case. Trains are cheaper and actually faster over a long distance. The optimal way to ship is actually intermodal: ship for between countries/continents, trains for long trips over land, and then trucks for the last leg. They don't really compete with each other as much as they work together, especially since they have a standardized protocol for inter-process communication known as containers. Of course electric automated trucks could change all that.

ethbro 8y ago
> Of course electric automated trucks could change all that. Unmanned trucks crossing long distances of rural America sounds like a recipe for hijacking loads.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Automated trucks don't necessarily have to be unmanned.
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    Just declare trucks corporations which makes them people and then they'll be able to carry guns in most rural areas.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    They do if you are automating them to avoid having to pay human drivers. It's kind of silly to go to all of the effort to automate a truck and then make someone sit on their thumbs behind the wheel for hours on end.
    - frankydp 8y ago
      If you can reduce legal risk(accidents) by 50x or 100x and extend the road time by 2x or 3x, then paying a security person seems like a doable call. Especially if you can pass some of that premium risk mitigation on to the customer, if load value dictates. Raw hourly cost may not even be the primary point under the manpower line of reasoning. It is certainly important, but not necessarily the key issue.
      - jandrese 8y ago
        You can't increase road time with a human driver at the wheel, that's a safety issue. While it's already dubious to hire a driver for an autonomous truck, it's even sillier to pretend that the driver is useful when you're having the truck do the work while the driver sleeps. Extending road time by 3x means running the truck 24 hours a day, and keeping a person awake that long will not improve safety.
- elsonrodriguez 8y ago
  Hijacking trucks filled to the brim with sensors sounds like a recipe for jail time. The logistics of stopping and looting a truck involves too many parties, and ensuring that each party is following enough security protocols to not be identified via face, vehicle, or gait will ensure that only a few small sophisticated heists will ever be successful.
  - yourapostasy 8y ago
    > ...filled to the brim with sensors... Has someone actually worked out that tons of sensors will cost far less than people-driven trucks? As it is, fuel is the big cost, followed by driver salary [1]. L5 autonomous driving is not going to come cheap, that gear is going to price as close to 3X driver salary as they can get away with, on the assumption they can run close to around the clock. Whose margin is getting compressed for the additional sensor gear? This doesn't even touch upon that as soon as L5 is available and if 24x7 L5 operations approved, you suddenly just increased industry transport capacity 3X, leading to a sudden oversupply in certain segments and scenarios, while still requiring a certain baseline to handle peak load demands. That chaos will cause a lot of margin compression, and lots of rosy profit projections from L5 autonomous driving without drivers will turn into a race for finding more customer demand. I can see some modest sensor gear, but nothing fancy, and not a lot of them. Perhaps high resolution visual and night vision cameras coupled with lots of street camera access, with lots of back-end software processing will deter most theft attempts? We might ironically get to L5, only to stick lower-paid security guards on a random number of trucks. [1] https://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucking/ https://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-truck...
    - jandrese 8y ago
      Sensor packages and near-AI compute clusters constantly get cheaper as the technology improves. Today it doesn't make sense, but in 10-15 years when a full self-driving solution costs maybe $1k? It's a no brainer, especially for long haul trucking. I'd guess that putting a security guard on a truck will be an exceptional occurrence, probably only used when the truck is hauling an especially valuable cargo or going through a known trouble spot.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  There are multiple mile long trains with only 2 people on board at any given time, unmanned trucks won't be a problem as they'd likely travel just travel convoys with a couple people overlooking the fleet.
pmiller2 8y ago
> Trains are cheaper [...] over a long distance. Right there's your hard cap. Make trains too expensive relative to trucks, and, suddenly, everything goes most of the way by truck.
azinman2 8y ago
But why? I would think that trains, which aren’t constrained to gasoline and have dedicated tracks, should be able to obtain higher efficiencies compared to trucks going the same long distances?
- dj-wonk 8y ago
  Think of shipping as an optimization problem where various modes are selected for different parts of the path. You have to run the optimization problem to see what mix makes the most sense -- and don't expect it to necessarily be simple or obvious. Logistics is complex; you'll also need to factor many things into the optimization: * both fixed and marginal costs of each mode (e.g. maintaining track, monitoring safety, wear and tear on vehicles, varying fuel costs) * constraints (due to technology, personnel, regulations, etc) * fluctuations in demand and shipping objectives * lots more If you want to focus on only one slice of the problem... Sure, for the exact same route (meaning that a particular track has already been built), one would expect that trains are more efficient. The data shows that; e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport#Trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...
- dwighttk 8y ago
  you are correct. That's why they don't really compete with each other. You put it on a train for a long distance and then trucks pick it up to spread it out from there.
  - dj-wonk 8y ago
    Sometimes people use "compete" in a casual way that overlooks key economic connections. Competition is a force that is always present, even if it is not currently the "most obvious" factor in play at a given time. I think any definition of competition must be relative to the sphere of economic activity. So, when it comes to transportation in general, rail and trucks do compete -- by this I mean they offer services with varying prices and characteristics. Just because rail and trucking have different sweet spots at a particular point in time does not mean that they don't compete. Both (a) think about how and why customers choose them over the other, (b) seek opportunities (for investment or growth) that lead to a competitive edge, and (c) therefore, influence each other.

ethbro 8y ago

> Of course electric automated trucks could change all that. Unmanned trucks crossing long distances of rural America sounds like a recipe for hijacking loads.

pmiller2 8y ago
Automated trucks don't necessarily have to be unmanned.
- grogenaut 8y ago
  Just declare trucks corporations which makes them people and then they'll be able to carry guns in most rural areas.
- jandrese 8y ago
  They do if you are automating them to avoid having to pay human drivers. It's kind of silly to go to all of the effort to automate a truck and then make someone sit on their thumbs behind the wheel for hours on end.
  - frankydp 8y ago
    If you can reduce legal risk(accidents) by 50x or 100x and extend the road time by 2x or 3x, then paying a security person seems like a doable call. Especially if you can pass some of that premium risk mitigation on to the customer, if load value dictates. Raw hourly cost may not even be the primary point under the manpower line of reasoning. It is certainly important, but not necessarily the key issue.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      You can't increase road time with a human driver at the wheel, that's a safety issue. While it's already dubious to hire a driver for an autonomous truck, it's even sillier to pretend that the driver is useful when you're having the truck do the work while the driver sleeps. Extending road time by 3x means running the truck 24 hours a day, and keeping a person awake that long will not improve safety.
elsonrodriguez 8y ago
Hijacking trucks filled to the brim with sensors sounds like a recipe for jail time. The logistics of stopping and looting a truck involves too many parties, and ensuring that each party is following enough security protocols to not be identified via face, vehicle, or gait will ensure that only a few small sophisticated heists will ever be successful.
- yourapostasy 8y ago
  > ...filled to the brim with sensors... Has someone actually worked out that tons of sensors will cost far less than people-driven trucks? As it is, fuel is the big cost, followed by driver salary [1]. L5 autonomous driving is not going to come cheap, that gear is going to price as close to 3X driver salary as they can get away with, on the assumption they can run close to around the clock. Whose margin is getting compressed for the additional sensor gear? This doesn't even touch upon that as soon as L5 is available and if 24x7 L5 operations approved, you suddenly just increased industry transport capacity 3X, leading to a sudden oversupply in certain segments and scenarios, while still requiring a certain baseline to handle peak load demands. That chaos will cause a lot of margin compression, and lots of rosy profit projections from L5 autonomous driving without drivers will turn into a race for finding more customer demand. I can see some modest sensor gear, but nothing fancy, and not a lot of them. Perhaps high resolution visual and night vision cameras coupled with lots of street camera access, with lots of back-end software processing will deter most theft attempts? We might ironically get to L5, only to stick lower-paid security guards on a random number of trucks. [1] https://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucking/ https://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-truck...
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Sensor packages and near-AI compute clusters constantly get cheaper as the technology improves. Today it doesn't make sense, but in 10-15 years when a full self-driving solution costs maybe $1k? It's a no brainer, especially for long haul trucking. I'd guess that putting a security guard on a truck will be an exceptional occurrence, probably only used when the truck is hauling an especially valuable cargo or going through a known trouble spot.
zjaffee 8y ago
There are multiple mile long trains with only 2 people on board at any given time, unmanned trucks won't be a problem as they'd likely travel just travel convoys with a couple people overlooking the fleet.

pmiller2 8y ago

> Trains are cheaper [...] over a long distance. Right there's your hard cap. Make trains too expensive relative to trucks, and, suddenly, everything goes most of the way by truck.

azinman2 8y ago

But why? I would think that trains, which aren’t constrained to gasoline and have dedicated tracks, should be able to obtain higher efficiencies compared to trucks going the same long distances?

dj-wonk 8y ago
Think of shipping as an optimization problem where various modes are selected for different parts of the path. You have to run the optimization problem to see what mix makes the most sense -- and don't expect it to necessarily be simple or obvious. Logistics is complex; you'll also need to factor many things into the optimization: * both fixed and marginal costs of each mode (e.g. maintaining track, monitoring safety, wear and tear on vehicles, varying fuel costs) * constraints (due to technology, personnel, regulations, etc) * fluctuations in demand and shipping objectives * lots more If you want to focus on only one slice of the problem... Sure, for the exact same route (meaning that a particular track has already been built), one would expect that trains are more efficient. The data shows that; e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport#Trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...
dwighttk 8y ago
you are correct. That's why they don't really compete with each other. You put it on a train for a long distance and then trucks pick it up to spread it out from there.
- dj-wonk 8y ago
  Sometimes people use "compete" in a casual way that overlooks key economic connections. Competition is a force that is always present, even if it is not currently the "most obvious" factor in play at a given time. I think any definition of competition must be relative to the sphere of economic activity. So, when it comes to transportation in general, rail and trucks do compete -- by this I mean they offer services with varying prices and characteristics. Just because rail and trucking have different sweet spots at a particular point in time does not mean that they don't compete. Both (a) think about how and why customers choose them over the other, (b) seek opportunities (for investment or growth) that lead to a competitive edge, and (c) therefore, influence each other.