3 ms·
On the trucking side of things, I think it'll actually be a positive for the industry in the short term (a decade or two), before the jobs really start to dry u
by nevir 5y ago
On the trucking side of things, I think it'll actually be a positive for the industry in the short term (a decade or two), before the jobs really start to dry up.
Rail freight will probably be impacted by automated trucks sooner than road freight, weirdly enough.
My guess about the industry's progression:
* Automated trucks take over long haul routes (e.g. highway driving) between major distribution hubs, and previous long haul drivers move to middle and last mile routes.
* Shippers begin to shift freight away from trains and towards trucks (because price of trucks goes down, speed of delivery goes up)
* Automated truck centric freeways (or lanes) begin to show up, allowing for higher density and speeds of truck traffic. Price further falls, volume increases. More jobs created in short and medium haul trucking to handle increased volume of things being shipped.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle medium haul (inner city between warehouses), jobs start declining.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle short haul (last mile), truckers are a truly dying breed at this point.
- munificent 5y agoThis sounds like slowly reinventing trains, but worse.
- 1270018080 5y agoA lot of people in America suffer from car-brain. Car infrastructure is the only thing they know.
- rootusrootus 5y agoConversely, a lot of people in smaller, denser countries suffer from anti-car-brain, and don't appreciate the difficulty implementing comprehensive public infrastructure on an America scale.
- 1270018080 5y agoAnd those difficulties are imaginary. If I wanted a high speed public rail line throughout Florida, a dense, narrow, flat state that's the size of a small country. Where is the scale challenge? Europe and America are about the same size. Why aren't you concerned about European scale? Why does it matter how your brain pictures administrative boundaries?
- marcusverus 5y agoOnce the driving is automated, what would prevent us from having a "fully" automated package delivery infrastructure? The roadblocks that come to mind (Box & labeling standardization, warehouse automations like pickers/packers/unpackers) all seem like much simpler problems than automated driving. I may be grossly oversimplifying the issue :)
- smoe 5y agoWouldn't it be faster for the autonomous trucks to go on autonomous trains in-between major hubs then drive off to do the last mile? Might require a built up of rail infrastructure and I don't know the limits of freight trains in general, but seeing passenger trains, going 2-3x faster than road speed limits I reckon while maybe not by as much, freight trains could still go quite a bit faster than driving the trucks long distances.