6 ms·

Surprisingly, there is no mention in the article of how the truckers feel about the threat of automation to their own jobs.

by asaph 7y ago

markus_zhang 7y ago
It will be there when auto-driving trucks come out in the near future. I think the trucks will get automated first, and then maybe city transit, especially subways, then it will spread from there. Any work that doesn't require a huge amount of human intelligence or human interaction will be automated maybe sooner than we think.
- HorizonXP 7y ago
  But trucking does require a decent amount of human intelligence and interaction, for now. (My dad is a trucker. He’s 50+, it won’t matter to him if his job gets automated.) About the only place that self-driving trucks can do decently is long-haul highway travel, and that’s probably the place where it’s most needed. Any type of intra-city travel, and low-speed maneuvering requires a lot of I/O and responding to a wide variety of conditions. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m saying that the work involved in automating that may not be worth the effort compared to paying a trucker.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Wow, your dad is in an unusually good financial situation if at the age of 50 it "won't matter to him if his job gets automated".
    - kccqzy 7y ago
      Truckers earn a lot. Especially owner-operators. Much more than you might assume. If he had been a trucker for most of his life, I would assume he probably had enough savings for early retirement.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      His job isn't getting automated tomorrow or even in the next 5yr and there are very, very few 50yo truckers that are dragging a dry van around the interstates (the first job to be automated)
    - HorizonXP 7y ago
      The opposite really, but he has poor health, and will probably rely on me to support him. Plus, the comment below mentions what I was thinking: by the time automation happens, he won't be trucking anymore.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Pretty much every single truck driver I've talked to on the subject is in deep denial. They believe that the weird layout of the loading dock at some warehouse could never be navigated by automated system or that them handing documents to someone at the point of delivery cannot be automated. They don't seem to understand just how much capital businesses are willing to spend to get rid of reoccurring labor costs. If there are any bright spots in all of this, it's that trucking has a high turnover rate already so few will directly lose their jobs and that trucking in general is rough on the body and the mind. The difficult question to answer is where will all of the people who would have gone into trucking going to go instead?
- klenwell 7y ago
  > They don't seem to understand just how much capital businesses are willing to spend to get rid of reoccurring labor costs. The trucking industry doesn't need to automate to slash labor costs. Exploitation is much simpler and more effective. A lot of truckers get the lesson eventually. The hard way. See for example: https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/ https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forc... A yearlong investigation by the USA TODAY Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute. If a driver quit, the company seized his truck and kept everything he had paid towards owning it. If drivers missed payments, or if they got sick or became too exhausted to go on, their companies fired them and kept everything. Then they turned around and leased the trucks to someone else. Drivers who manage to hang on to their jobs sometimes end up owing money to their employers – essentially working for free. Reporters identified seven different companies that have told their employees they owe money at week’s end.
  - vanniv 7y ago
    Company mining towns all over again, eh?
- 7y ago

Surprisingly, there is no mention in the article of how the truckers feel about the threat of automation to their own jobs.

by asaph 7y ago

Surprisingly, there is no mention in the article of how the truckers feel about the threat of automation to their own jobs.

markus_zhang 7y ago

It will be there when auto-driving trucks come out in the near future. I think the trucks will get automated first, and then maybe city transit, especially subways, then it will spread from there. Any work that doesn't require a huge amount of human intelligence or human interaction will be automated maybe sooner than we think.

HorizonXP 7y ago
But trucking does require a decent amount of human intelligence and interaction, for now. (My dad is a trucker. He’s 50+, it won’t matter to him if his job gets automated.) About the only place that self-driving trucks can do decently is long-haul highway travel, and that’s probably the place where it’s most needed. Any type of intra-city travel, and low-speed maneuvering requires a lot of I/O and responding to a wide variety of conditions. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m saying that the work involved in automating that may not be worth the effort compared to paying a trucker.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  Wow, your dad is in an unusually good financial situation if at the age of 50 it "won't matter to him if his job gets automated".
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    Truckers earn a lot. Especially owner-operators. Much more than you might assume. If he had been a trucker for most of his life, I would assume he probably had enough savings for early retirement.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    His job isn't getting automated tomorrow or even in the next 5yr and there are very, very few 50yo truckers that are dragging a dry van around the interstates (the first job to be automated)
  - HorizonXP 7y ago
    The opposite really, but he has poor health, and will probably rely on me to support him. Plus, the comment below mentions what I was thinking: by the time automation happens, he won't be trucking anymore.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Pretty much every single truck driver I've talked to on the subject is in deep denial. They believe that the weird layout of the loading dock at some warehouse could never be navigated by automated system or that them handing documents to someone at the point of delivery cannot be automated. They don't seem to understand just how much capital businesses are willing to spend to get rid of reoccurring labor costs. If there are any bright spots in all of this, it's that trucking has a high turnover rate already so few will directly lose their jobs and that trucking in general is rough on the body and the mind. The difficult question to answer is where will all of the people who would have gone into trucking going to go instead?

klenwell 7y ago
> They don't seem to understand just how much capital businesses are willing to spend to get rid of reoccurring labor costs. The trucking industry doesn't need to automate to slash labor costs. Exploitation is much simpler and more effective. A lot of truckers get the lesson eventually. The hard way. See for example: https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/ https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forc... A yearlong investigation by the USA TODAY Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute. If a driver quit, the company seized his truck and kept everything he had paid towards owning it. If drivers missed payments, or if they got sick or became too exhausted to go on, their companies fired them and kept everything. Then they turned around and leased the trucks to someone else. Drivers who manage to hang on to their jobs sometimes end up owing money to their employers – essentially working for free. Reporters identified seven different companies that have told their employees they owe money at week’s end.
- vanniv 7y ago
  Company mining towns all over again, eh?
7y ago