11 ms·

> For all the clients that have asked me about the political and economic problems associated with the rise of autonomous vehicles and more unemployed truckers,

by lkbm 5y ago

> For all the clients that have asked me about the political and economic problems associated with the rise of autonomous vehicles and more unemployed truckers, I keep telling them they’ve got it backwards: the US has had a trucker shortage for the last few years, and it’s projected to get worse. In addition to the need to point out that "shortage" just means "I don't want to pay market rate", a shortage of truck drivers does not negate the concern of automation causing mass unemployment of truckers. The concern is that the 450,000 truckers will lose their jobs. "We want to have 500,000 truckers who would lose their jobs" doesn't addresses that issue. To be clear, I'm still very much in favor of automation, but people aren't "getting it backwards" here. These are two different problems.

dnissley 5y ago
Could we reframe this in a way that takes both supply and demand sides into consideration? Something like: There's a lot of stuff to ship, but margins on those things are very thin + demand for said stuff is extremely elastic due to it not being super essential so there's also not a lot of room for increased driver wages.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  This is a much better framing of the problem. And a much clearer case for automation.
- amoorthy 5y ago
  Well said! Thank you.
- shostack 5y ago
  Thank you. The one sided view we typically see on this, while in m supporting my views on paying people what they are worth, often glosses over that this isn't evil fat cat monopolists with monocles trying to keep the man down in all these cases. Entire business models or industries may no longer be viable without major pricing changes throughout the solid k supply chain, which will ultimately give the consumer sticker shock. It's a hot mess. Doesn't mean drivers shouldn't get paid more, but also doesn't mean it's pure selfish capitalism on behalf of those hiring them.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Truck drives tend to be truck owners doing independent jobs. And when the switch from wages to this happened, they were in fact massively taken advantage off. There was a lot of fraud or at least lying involved. A lot of one sided contracts putting all disadvantages on drivers. And then working drivers to exhaustion just pay debts. It is not that customer would not buy product for 10 cents more. It is that, companies that took advantage of drivers had competitive advantage and grew to own market.
- edge17 5y ago
  I would add that if manufacturing moves back to the US in any meaningful way, prices across the board will go up and consumption will go down. A lot of those thin margins will get crushed anyway, especially because - as you pointed out, much of the demand is elastic.
  - donw 5y ago
    Why wasn't this a problem from 1950-1970 or so?
    - inetknght 5y ago
      I would argue that was because the revenue was more evenly distributed across the workforce instead of being focused in the few at the top.
    - kortex 5y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Maybe that's a a good thing? Per https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-wars https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-... the rest of the world is chucking all sorts of junk at once --- per the high elasticity of the demand we barely want it but "oh fine" we'll take another shift if they are just that cheap. If we're the dollar exporter, we should be able to call the shots in other ways. Dollars for democracy (hah), dollars for rail not cars, etc. etc. It's a massive soft power and develop-for-greater-good opportunity, but we choose to get inundated with cheap crap instead.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    Shipping things across the ocean is externalizing carbon impacts of shipping emissions. It shouldn't be nearly as cheap as it is. Also, overseas manufacturing amounts to environmental law arbitrage, enabled by falsely cheap shipping costs, so you can pollute as much as you want in Indonesia or China or India or whatever and then ship it to environmentally-restricted US. And we're enriching our enemies (China) and technologically and infrastructurally enabling them. All things that also aren't priced into the "cheap goods". Free trade arguments also fail when China does massive government investment to block access to emergent manufacturing markets by unsubsidized countries. And they manipulate their currency. America should be onboard with righting the actual carbon emissions cost of goods shipment, but come on, the rich are getting rich off of that in America and don't give two shits about the middle class or future prosperity of the USA. After all, they're all buying fortress estates in New Zealand for the forthcoming collapse that they themselves are willfully enabling.
duxup 5y ago
Yup, I work in logistics. Driver wages have been stagnant at best, dropping at worst for many many years. Outside specialized drivers, it's a horrible career choice.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  From 2018: > Oppelaar's first trucking job, in 1977, paid $5 an hour — or $21.50 an hour in 2018 dollars, he said. That was soon bumped up to $30 an hour in today's dollars. > But now, as a line-haul driver for XPO Logistics, one of the world's largest logistics companies, Oppelaar earns about just under $25 an hour, he told Business Insider. * https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-shortage-eld-mandate-cdl-truck-driver-salary-2018-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-shortage-eld-mandat...
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    Not discounting the possibility wages have declined. However, just comparing hourly rate in trucking is over-simplifying. Does the company cover any expenses? Does the driver own the cab? Is there a federal mandate on rest hours per day/week/month? And it is always misleading to compare wages "in today's dollars" as if every item and wage and asset inflates perfectly evenly.
    - harry8 5y ago
      At some level of detail you're right of course but I feel completely safe ignoring all that when we're talking about someone being paid $25/hr. It's objectively low. Is the employer paying the drivers' rent?
      - listenallyall 5y ago
        Does this particular guy have a clean driving record? Is he reliable? Here's a pretty well-known company stating they pay about $50k annually to 1st year drivers, with the potential for more than double that down the road. Walmart drivers average $87,500 annually. Of course, these companies won't even talk to you if you have a DUI or accidents, and then sure, your earning is going to be much lower. https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/experienced/truck-driver-pay https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/experienced/tru... https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/03/09/walmarts-hiring-500-truck-drivers-a-member-of-our-private-fleet-says-dont-wait-to-apply https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/03/09/walmarts-h...
julianapostate 5y ago
One is a real problem, actually experienced and only getting worse. One is a pretend problem that is only talked about and never experienced.
- GauntletWizard 5y ago
  THe idea that Autonomous trucks could put all of the Truckers in the US out of business overnight is fantasy... but not an insane one, by economics standards. There is significant technological promise - We already have trucks that can line-follow for hundreds of miles without crashing. This represents an amazing amount of progress compared to the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, where the farthest car made it 11KM[1]. We could see just as much progress in the next five years as in the last 15, or we could see none at all - And how much progress we've made is debatable too, because some estimates say 1 crash/1,000 miles, and others 1/1,000,000. The promise of this technology being on the horizon has led to pressure from the trucking companies to keep their costs down, lest they be replaced. The question in logistics providers minds is not if, but when, autonomous driving will replace human drivers for a significant number of miles driven. This has led to a depression effect where new drivers are not competing, because they're being offered lower wages and they see the writing on the wall too. There are also several massive propaganda thumbs on the scale, including Government and tech companies, pretending that these things are closer than they are. Nobody is making rational decisions here; The market is truly insane. The workers are bearing the cost, and are choosing to take their labor elsewhere. Economics is always an equilibrium, but often one still experiencing shocks. The market can and will adjust wages back up - If self-driving does not pan out. But that threat is acting as a buffer to suppress correction from the shocks that the system has experienced. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Gra...
  - mattmanser 5y ago
    It's pretty much what happened to merchant shipping in the 1970s when container ships came in. Happened before, will happen again.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
yyy888sss 5y ago
Yep. Without regulations that restrict people from taking new jobs, any labour 'shortage' can be solved by offering better conditions and/or higher pay. Take it to a hypothetical extreme: if truckers were offered $500k/yr and had to work 20 hours a week there would be no shortage.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  Not true. Markets take time to find new equilibrium points, during that time there can be shortages. Not to mention that there is an upper limit on supply of labor in almost all markets.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    > Not to mention that there is an upper limit on supply of labor in almost all markets. You don't think the hundreds of thousands or millions of workers that work at jobs like an Amazon warehouse and make 15/hour would switch to being truck drivers for 500k/year? My job is easy but shit, I would seriously contemplate becoming a truck driver for a that much. It's supply and demand. Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases. “Supply” is the function mapping price to quantity supplied. With normal shape of a supply curve of a good or seevice in an idealized Econ 101 economy with no sharp supply constraints but the usual increasing marginal costs, increasing price increases quantity supplied.
    - aahortwwy 5y ago
      Do you know how to drive a truck? I don't. It takes time to learn. Increasing wages for truck drivers doesn't make it faster to learn how to drive a truck. > It's supply and demand. Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases. And demand decreases. But sometimes demand _can't_ decrease, and that's another source of shortages. If there's not enough food to go around you can't just raise prices to solve the problem (well, you can, but it's not really an acceptable solution). Point being, shortages are a real thing. See also: HN's favorite topic, housing in the Bay Area.
bdamm 5y ago
With the rise of autonomous trucking will also come a return to highway robbery. Seems to me the job of trucking will turn to the job of security. There will evolve long term fluctuations in demand as robbery and security vie for dominance.
- donw 5y ago
  I hadn't thought of that, but good point! A truck driven by a person feels very different than a robot. Not sure that putting people on security quite fixes that, though, as they'd need to be properly kitted up to engage with raiders. That probably looks even worse, though. It's the story of a bunch of plucky underdogs liberating a load of produce from a robotic truck guarded by heavily-armed thugs. Reeks heavily of Hunger Games.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Looking forward to that Mad Max sequel.
- phreeza 5y ago
  How feasible is it to unload and reload a truck in time, if police can be dispatched almost immediately? You can't take the entire trailer in an era of tiny and cheap gps trackers.
CivBase 5y ago
> In addition to the need to point out that "shortage" just means "I don't want to pay market rate" I'm not very familiar with the trucking industry and I wont question your assertion that the shortage is (at least in part) caused by below-market-rate wages, but I think it's more complex than that. We're in our second recession in less than two decades. During that time, demand for trucking has skyrocketed. And all the while rising gas prices and impending automation loom over the industry. As I understand, many truck drivers own their trucks and those don't come cheap. I suspect there are few willing to make that investment considering all the things I just said. I suspect wages are low because the industry is taking advantage of those who already made the investment.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Yes, on the contrary, if the labor market wasn't tight, there would be little investment in automated trucks in the first place. But if we were really serious about the driver shortage and freight bottleneck issues, we would simply build more rail. We've had (basically) driverless trucks before the driverful kind! The fact that investors flock to AI hail maries and not tried-and-proven infrastructure demonstrates the limitation of the demand on one hand, and asset bubble in tech on the other.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  You don’t “simply” build new rail in America. Nothing is simple about constructing new rail.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    Curiosity, not challenge: why not? Political issues, engineering issues, both, or other?
    - breckenedge 5y ago
      Economics too. Rail mostly already exists where it can sustain itself, the rest of the country is just not dense enough.
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        So an enlightened Fordist shipping conglomerate would try to densify urban cores, where it is most efficient to get people their cheap stuff.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        No, it's because rail doesn't get the massive subsidies that roads do. Roads are artificially cheap to use, especially for trucking that does the majority of the damage and pay minimal road fees, while rail has to pay for itself. It is very hard for rail, passenger or freight, to compete with the largess of federal tax dollars for road usage. If road fees were matched to the actual cost of road maintenance, like they are with rail, a lot of freight would shift over to barge and train overnight. Simply put, railways are much more efficient between two fixed points than roads. They require much less fuel per ton, and they require much less labor, land, and capital equipment per person mile or ton mile. If the costs were properly priced in, consumers of various different types would strongly prefer rail for transit between fixed points (e.g. city to city). But currently the inefficiency of road usage is paid for by the federal government. The density argument is massively overstated. Ohio has roughly the same density as France 282/mi^2 vs. 269/mi^2, and it's not even our most dense state. The fact that states like Ohio don't have anywhere close to the rail network that France has is a consequence of political decisions, not economics or the built environment.
KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
But there is no rise of autonomous vehicles. Vehicles equipped with driver-assist features still require drivers. Suggesting that automated lane-keeping and traffic-light detection etc. is putting drivers out of business is like suggesting that autocomplete is putting writers out of business.
- inetknght 5y ago
  > Suggesting that automated lane-keeping and traffic-light detection etc. is putting drivers out of business is like suggesting that autocomplete is putting writers out of business. Autocomplete paired with autogrammar and sentence prediction. Say, have you noticed how a lot of "news" sites these days have a lot of articles that seem like they're generated by AI? Have you also noticed how most of the media feels empty and that investigative journalists are vanishing and often even being injured or killed?
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    > Say, have you noticed how a lot of "news" sites these days have a lot of articles that seem like they're generated by AI? Have you also noticed how most of the media feels empty and that investigative journalists are vanishing and often even being injured or killed? Literally no to all of these. Not sure where you're looking.
    - moffkalast 5y ago
      He's right though, there are lots of articles being written by bots even in print these days, not being able to tell the difference between a somewhat bad writer and a bot is what makes them viable. And the tech just keeps getting better every day. Same goes for cars, it's not a thing until it is.
      - HPsquared 5y ago
        Motor vehicles have always been highly regulated though, they'll probably need drivers onboard at all times whether they are driving or not, for safety. Kind of like train drivers (though that's a much more controlled environment) or aviation (again a much more controlled environment).
rmason 5y ago
Pretty clear that we won't eliminate 500,000 trucking jobs any time soon. What we can do is eliminate the drivers jobs who run long distances. Running up and down I-80 or I-75 is a much simpler problem than negotiating the crowded streets of New York City or Chicago. Someone is still going to have to take the truck from the freeway stop into the city, make the delivery and pickup the next load. Short term one very promising source of new drivers is parolees. If you've got a felony on your record it's still hard to get a good paying job. There are a couple of charities who train parolees to drive trucks. They've had good success but are limited by funding.
- lkbm 5y ago
  I didn't link any sources, but what I was seeing was ~500k long-haul truck drivers, >2MM heavy/semi truck drivers[0], and >3MM total truck drivers[1]. I think it will be some time before any significant portion of even the long-haul jobs go away, but will be a lot of jobs when they do start to vanish. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-there-really-a-truck-driver-shortage https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t... [1] https://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa https://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa
chalst 5y ago
The massive investments in autonomous vehicles are maybe a causal factor in the trucker shortage: fewer people want to invest in getting the license if they attach any credence to the widespread claims that the job might not exist in 5 years.
phreeza 5y ago
> "shortage" just means "I don't want to pay market rate" I've read this repeatedly, and it makes sense at face value, but at some point don't some activities just have to be dropped, since there is a finite amount of labor to go around? edit: upon further thought, there is probably a pool of labor available currently on unemployment benefits that could be activated with sufficiently high wages, but even that is not infinite.
- saberdancer 5y ago
  With sufficiently high wages you can get people to change jobs to become truckers. Problem here is that truckers are not working in vacuum, their wages come from the transport of goods. If the goods have low margins, wages of truckers cannot increase by much.

by lkbm 5y ago

dnissley 5y ago

Could we reframe this in a way that takes both supply and demand sides into consideration? Something like: There's a lot of stuff to ship, but margins on those things are very thin + demand for said stuff is extremely elastic due to it not being super essential so there's also not a lot of room for increased driver wages.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
This is a much better framing of the problem. And a much clearer case for automation.
amoorthy 5y ago
Well said! Thank you.
shostack 5y ago
Thank you. The one sided view we typically see on this, while in m supporting my views on paying people what they are worth, often glosses over that this isn't evil fat cat monopolists with monocles trying to keep the man down in all these cases. Entire business models or industries may no longer be viable without major pricing changes throughout the solid k supply chain, which will ultimately give the consumer sticker shock. It's a hot mess. Doesn't mean drivers shouldn't get paid more, but also doesn't mean it's pure selfish capitalism on behalf of those hiring them.
- watwut 5y ago
  Truck drives tend to be truck owners doing independent jobs. And when the switch from wages to this happened, they were in fact massively taken advantage off. There was a lot of fraud or at least lying involved. A lot of one sided contracts putting all disadvantages on drivers. And then working drivers to exhaustion just pay debts. It is not that customer would not buy product for 10 cents more. It is that, companies that took advantage of drivers had competitive advantage and grew to own market.
edge17 5y ago
I would add that if manufacturing moves back to the US in any meaningful way, prices across the board will go up and consumption will go down. A lot of those thin margins will get crushed anyway, especially because - as you pointed out, much of the demand is elastic.
- donw 5y ago
  Why wasn't this a problem from 1950-1970 or so?
  - inetknght 5y ago
    I would argue that was because the revenue was more evenly distributed across the workforce instead of being focused in the few at the top.
  - kortex 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Maybe that's a a good thing? Per https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-wars https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-... the rest of the world is chucking all sorts of junk at once --- per the high elasticity of the demand we barely want it but "oh fine" we'll take another shift if they are just that cheap. If we're the dollar exporter, we should be able to call the shots in other ways. Dollars for democracy (hah), dollars for rail not cars, etc. etc. It's a massive soft power and develop-for-greater-good opportunity, but we choose to get inundated with cheap crap instead.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Shipping things across the ocean is externalizing carbon impacts of shipping emissions. It shouldn't be nearly as cheap as it is. Also, overseas manufacturing amounts to environmental law arbitrage, enabled by falsely cheap shipping costs, so you can pollute as much as you want in Indonesia or China or India or whatever and then ship it to environmentally-restricted US. And we're enriching our enemies (China) and technologically and infrastructurally enabling them. All things that also aren't priced into the "cheap goods". Free trade arguments also fail when China does massive government investment to block access to emergent manufacturing markets by unsubsidized countries. And they manipulate their currency. America should be onboard with righting the actual carbon emissions cost of goods shipment, but come on, the rich are getting rich off of that in America and don't give two shits about the middle class or future prosperity of the USA. After all, they're all buying fortress estates in New Zealand for the forthcoming collapse that they themselves are willfully enabling.

duxup 5y ago

Yup, I work in logistics. Driver wages have been stagnant at best, dropping at worst for many many years. Outside specialized drivers, it's a horrible career choice.

throw0101a 5y ago
From 2018: > Oppelaar's first trucking job, in 1977, paid $5 an hour — or $21.50 an hour in 2018 dollars, he said. That was soon bumped up to $30 an hour in today's dollars. > But now, as a line-haul driver for XPO Logistics, one of the world's largest logistics companies, Oppelaar earns about just under $25 an hour, he told Business Insider. * https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-shortage-eld-mandate-cdl-truck-driver-salary-2018-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-shortage-eld-mandat...
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Not discounting the possibility wages have declined. However, just comparing hourly rate in trucking is over-simplifying. Does the company cover any expenses? Does the driver own the cab? Is there a federal mandate on rest hours per day/week/month? And it is always misleading to compare wages "in today's dollars" as if every item and wage and asset inflates perfectly evenly.
  - harry8 5y ago
    At some level of detail you're right of course but I feel completely safe ignoring all that when we're talking about someone being paid $25/hr. It's objectively low. Is the employer paying the drivers' rent?
    - listenallyall 5y ago
      Does this particular guy have a clean driving record? Is he reliable? Here's a pretty well-known company stating they pay about $50k annually to 1st year drivers, with the potential for more than double that down the road. Walmart drivers average $87,500 annually. Of course, these companies won't even talk to you if you have a DUI or accidents, and then sure, your earning is going to be much lower. https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/experienced/truck-driver-pay https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/experienced/tru... https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/03/09/walmarts-hiring-500-truck-drivers-a-member-of-our-private-fleet-says-dont-wait-to-apply https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/03/09/walmarts-h...

julianapostate 5y ago

One is a real problem, actually experienced and only getting worse. One is a pretend problem that is only talked about and never experienced.

GauntletWizard 5y ago
THe idea that Autonomous trucks could put all of the Truckers in the US out of business overnight is fantasy... but not an insane one, by economics standards. There is significant technological promise - We already have trucks that can line-follow for hundreds of miles without crashing. This represents an amazing amount of progress compared to the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, where the farthest car made it 11KM[1]. We could see just as much progress in the next five years as in the last 15, or we could see none at all - And how much progress we've made is debatable too, because some estimates say 1 crash/1,000 miles, and others 1/1,000,000. The promise of this technology being on the horizon has led to pressure from the trucking companies to keep their costs down, lest they be replaced. The question in logistics providers minds is not if, but when, autonomous driving will replace human drivers for a significant number of miles driven. This has led to a depression effect where new drivers are not competing, because they're being offered lower wages and they see the writing on the wall too. There are also several massive propaganda thumbs on the scale, including Government and tech companies, pretending that these things are closer than they are. Nobody is making rational decisions here; The market is truly insane. The workers are bearing the cost, and are choosing to take their labor elsewhere. Economics is always an equilibrium, but often one still experiencing shocks. The market can and will adjust wages back up - If self-driving does not pan out. But that threat is acting as a buffer to suppress correction from the shocks that the system has experienced. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Gra...
- mattmanser 5y ago
  It's pretty much what happened to merchant shipping in the 1970s when container ships came in. Happened before, will happen again.
- sokoloff 5y ago

yyy888sss 5y ago

Yep. Without regulations that restrict people from taking new jobs, any labour 'shortage' can be solved by offering better conditions and/or higher pay. Take it to a hypothetical extreme: if truckers were offered $500k/yr and had to work 20 hours a week there would be no shortage.

aahortwwy 5y ago
Not true. Markets take time to find new equilibrium points, during that time there can be shortages. Not to mention that there is an upper limit on supply of labor in almost all markets.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  > Not to mention that there is an upper limit on supply of labor in almost all markets. You don't think the hundreds of thousands or millions of workers that work at jobs like an Amazon warehouse and make 15/hour would switch to being truck drivers for 500k/year? My job is easy but shit, I would seriously contemplate becoming a truck driver for a that much. It's supply and demand. Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases. “Supply” is the function mapping price to quantity supplied. With normal shape of a supply curve of a good or seevice in an idealized Econ 101 economy with no sharp supply constraints but the usual increasing marginal costs, increasing price increases quantity supplied.
  - aahortwwy 5y ago
    Do you know how to drive a truck? I don't. It takes time to learn. Increasing wages for truck drivers doesn't make it faster to learn how to drive a truck. > It's supply and demand. Supply is low, increase pay and supply increases. And demand decreases. But sometimes demand _can't_ decrease, and that's another source of shortages. If there's not enough food to go around you can't just raise prices to solve the problem (well, you can, but it's not really an acceptable solution). Point being, shortages are a real thing. See also: HN's favorite topic, housing in the Bay Area.

bdamm 5y ago

With the rise of autonomous trucking will also come a return to highway robbery. Seems to me the job of trucking will turn to the job of security. There will evolve long term fluctuations in demand as robbery and security vie for dominance.

donw 5y ago
I hadn't thought of that, but good point! A truck driven by a person feels very different than a robot. Not sure that putting people on security quite fixes that, though, as they'd need to be properly kitted up to engage with raiders. That probably looks even worse, though. It's the story of a bunch of plucky underdogs liberating a load of produce from a robotic truck guarded by heavily-armed thugs. Reeks heavily of Hunger Games.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Looking forward to that Mad Max sequel.
phreeza 5y ago
How feasible is it to unload and reload a truck in time, if police can be dispatched almost immediately? You can't take the entire trailer in an era of tiny and cheap gps trackers.

CivBase 5y ago

> In addition to the need to point out that "shortage" just means "I don't want to pay market rate" I'm not very familiar with the trucking industry and I wont question your assertion that the shortage is (at least in part) caused by below-market-rate wages, but I think it's more complex than that. We're in our second recession in less than two decades. During that time, demand for trucking has skyrocketed. And all the while rising gas prices and impending automation loom over the industry. As I understand, many truck drivers own their trucks and those don't come cheap. I suspect there are few willing to make that investment considering all the things I just said. I suspect wages are low because the industry is taking advantage of those who already made the investment.

Ericson2314 5y ago

Yes, on the contrary, if the labor market wasn't tight, there would be little investment in automated trucks in the first place. But if we were really serious about the driver shortage and freight bottleneck issues, we would simply build more rail. We've had (basically) driverless trucks before the driverful kind! The fact that investors flock to AI hail maries and not tried-and-proven infrastructure demonstrates the limitation of the demand on one hand, and asset bubble in tech on the other.

xyzzyz 5y ago
You don’t “simply” build new rail in America. Nothing is simple about constructing new rail.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  Curiosity, not challenge: why not? Political issues, engineering issues, both, or other?
  - breckenedge 5y ago
    Economics too. Rail mostly already exists where it can sustain itself, the rest of the country is just not dense enough.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      So an enlightened Fordist shipping conglomerate would try to densify urban cores, where it is most efficient to get people their cheap stuff.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      No, it's because rail doesn't get the massive subsidies that roads do. Roads are artificially cheap to use, especially for trucking that does the majority of the damage and pay minimal road fees, while rail has to pay for itself. It is very hard for rail, passenger or freight, to compete with the largess of federal tax dollars for road usage. If road fees were matched to the actual cost of road maintenance, like they are with rail, a lot of freight would shift over to barge and train overnight. Simply put, railways are much more efficient between two fixed points than roads. They require much less fuel per ton, and they require much less labor, land, and capital equipment per person mile or ton mile. If the costs were properly priced in, consumers of various different types would strongly prefer rail for transit between fixed points (e.g. city to city). But currently the inefficiency of road usage is paid for by the federal government. The density argument is massively overstated. Ohio has roughly the same density as France 282/mi^2 vs. 269/mi^2, and it's not even our most dense state. The fact that states like Ohio don't have anywhere close to the rail network that France has is a consequence of political decisions, not economics or the built environment.

KKKKkkkk1 5y ago

But there is no rise of autonomous vehicles. Vehicles equipped with driver-assist features still require drivers. Suggesting that automated lane-keeping and traffic-light detection etc. is putting drivers out of business is like suggesting that autocomplete is putting writers out of business.

inetknght 5y ago
> Suggesting that automated lane-keeping and traffic-light detection etc. is putting drivers out of business is like suggesting that autocomplete is putting writers out of business. Autocomplete paired with autogrammar and sentence prediction. Say, have you noticed how a lot of "news" sites these days have a lot of articles that seem like they're generated by AI? Have you also noticed how most of the media feels empty and that investigative journalists are vanishing and often even being injured or killed?
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  > Say, have you noticed how a lot of "news" sites these days have a lot of articles that seem like they're generated by AI? Have you also noticed how most of the media feels empty and that investigative journalists are vanishing and often even being injured or killed? Literally no to all of these. Not sure where you're looking.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    He's right though, there are lots of articles being written by bots even in print these days, not being able to tell the difference between a somewhat bad writer and a bot is what makes them viable. And the tech just keeps getting better every day. Same goes for cars, it's not a thing until it is.
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      Motor vehicles have always been highly regulated though, they'll probably need drivers onboard at all times whether they are driving or not, for safety. Kind of like train drivers (though that's a much more controlled environment) or aviation (again a much more controlled environment).

rmason 5y ago

Pretty clear that we won't eliminate 500,000 trucking jobs any time soon. What we can do is eliminate the drivers jobs who run long distances. Running up and down I-80 or I-75 is a much simpler problem than negotiating the crowded streets of New York City or Chicago. Someone is still going to have to take the truck from the freeway stop into the city, make the delivery and pickup the next load. Short term one very promising source of new drivers is parolees. If you've got a felony on your record it's still hard to get a good paying job. There are a couple of charities who train parolees to drive trucks. They've had good success but are limited by funding.

lkbm 5y ago
I didn't link any sources, but what I was seeing was ~500k long-haul truck drivers, >2MM heavy/semi truck drivers[0], and >3MM total truck drivers[1]. I think it will be some time before any significant portion of even the long-haul jobs go away, but will be a lot of jobs when they do start to vanish. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-there-really-a-truck-driver-shortage https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t... [1] https://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa https://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa

chalst 5y ago

The massive investments in autonomous vehicles are maybe a causal factor in the trucker shortage: fewer people want to invest in getting the license if they attach any credence to the widespread claims that the job might not exist in 5 years.

phreeza 5y ago

> "shortage" just means "I don't want to pay market rate" I've read this repeatedly, and it makes sense at face value, but at some point don't some activities just have to be dropped, since there is a finite amount of labor to go around? edit: upon further thought, there is probably a pool of labor available currently on unemployment benefits that could be activated with sufficiently high wages, but even that is not infinite.

saberdancer 5y ago
With sufficiently high wages you can get people to change jobs to become truckers. Problem here is that truckers are not working in vacuum, their wages come from the transport of goods. If the goods have low margins, wages of truckers cannot increase by much.