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You're correct. The article was imprecise with its terminology. Most people who aren't familiar with trucking understand a tractor-trailer as a single vehicle,

by ethbr0 5y ago

You're correct. The article was imprecise with its terminology. Most people who aren't familiar with trucking understand a tractor-trailer as a single vehicle, because that's what they usually see on the road. When in reality it's exactly what the phrase describes: a tractor (or cab, or engine and steering and driver) + a trailer (or chassis + whatever it's hauling). The entire idea of modern over-the-road trucking is built on the concept that one cab can pick up and haul any standard chassis (leaving aside hazmat and other complexities). This is what allows for optimized freight movement, as you can limit the amount of time cabs are moving around without hauling anything, in addition to decoupling the load/unloading of a trailer (time consuming) from the driver turning around (want to minimize). I.e. driver arrives at warehouse with container A on chassis B, parks it in a loading dock, and immediately hooks up to container T, already waiting on chassis U, and heads back out. The bottleneck in this case was: (1) nowhere to legally put empty containers, causing (2) empty containers to stay on chassis, leading to (3) no available empty chassis to unload port cargo onto (containers must be loaded onto some sort of chassis to be removed from a port), leading to (4) a backup and full port yard, leading to (5) ports refusing to accept empties, to conserve their limited yard space, leading to GOTO 1.

SilasX 5y ago
>Most people who aren't familiar with trucking understand a tractor-trailer as a single vehicle, because that's what they usually see on the road. Heh, I was noticing myself that it was kind of hard to follow because the domain ontology (what entities exist and how they relate) wasn't make explicit (like I just did with the previous parenthetical). Would have helped to know that a chassis and container-free trailer are the same thing. And so I kind of balked when the author said the Flexport CEO: >>Describes a clear physical problem that everyone can understand, in simple terms that everyone can understand but that don’t talk down to anyone.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Granted, Twitter virality definitely has a certain TED-ness about it: boil everything down to a simple model system, that makes everyone listening feel smart, and end on an optimistic note, without mentioning any intractable nuances.

by ethbr0 5y ago

SilasX 5y ago

>Most people who aren't familiar with trucking understand a tractor-trailer as a single vehicle, because that's what they usually see on the road. Heh, I was noticing myself that it was kind of hard to follow because the domain ontology (what entities exist and how they relate) wasn't make explicit (like I just did with the previous parenthetical). Would have helped to know that a chassis and container-free trailer are the same thing. And so I kind of balked when the author said the Flexport CEO: >>Describes a clear physical problem that everyone can understand, in simple terms that everyone can understand but that don’t talk down to anyone.

ethbr0 5y ago
Granted, Twitter virality definitely has a certain TED-ness about it: boil everything down to a simple model system, that makes everyone listening feel smart, and end on an optimistic note, without mentioning any intractable nuances.