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Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands
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- Lawtonfogle 11y agoSelf checkout only replaces a small percentage of the total work done by a grocery store worker. It has likely led to a small drop in employment, but nothing like when self driving technology fully rolls out. A few highly specialized replacements will have the same effect as the self checkout, but unlike the self checkout, the self driving technology can continue replacing jobs beyond this initial specialized cases.
- mbil 11y agoThis is going to disrupt trucking companies just like automobiles disrupted horse-drawn carriages.
- yen223 11y agoWhen was the last time you talked to a bank teller face-to-face to withdraw cash?
- NovaS1X 11y agoOnce a month to pay rent.
- jessaustin 11y agoYour landlord won't take a check? How many times has he been robbed?
- free2rhyme214 11y agoTransferring money is way easier.
- bryondowd 11y agoI had a landlord that required the rent in cash. Would be very surprised if it wasn't so they could under-report on their taxes or something.
- slavik81 11y agoFewer workers means less spent on wages, which means less contributed in income taxes. These changes reduce government's profits while increasing the oil company's profits. The new NDP government promised as a part of their campaign to review royalty rates. This seems like an argument that they'll need to increase even just to keep revenue constant.
- adventured 11y agoCanadian corporations pay taxes on their profits. They also distribute income to shareholders, who then pay taxes. If they pay their execs rich salaries, those execs pay rich taxes. All corporate profit eventually ends up in the hands of an individual over time, and Canada has relatively high personal income taxes. It also varies by the country of course. Oil companies in the US pay among the highest tax rates. Exxon and Chevron for example typically pay 30%+ rates. Last three years for Exxon: Income before tax: $188 billion; Income tax expense: $73 billion; Net income: $110 billion Some of it is also double taxed, so the real tax rate is even higher than just counting the corporate income tax.
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- justonepost 11y agoIf it were up to me, all of our money would be only be taxed when we withdrew it from our bank accounts to pay for stuff, with tax credits for the poor so it's not regressive.
- thrill 11y agoTax imports ... and nothing else.
- slavik81 11y agoI'm not really familiar with corporate taxation, but a lot of those taxes sound like they might go to different places. As an Albertan, it matters to me whether money goes to my provincial government or whether it goes to some other province or country's government. The people of Alberta own the unextracted oil in this province. They, via the government, sell it to companies who extract and profit from it. Just saying, if the people of Alberta can raise their prices, they will. They've certainly been talking about it.
- ourmandave 11y agoDammit, I love giant dump trucks. Once they become driverless I can never look at them again without thinking of Maximum Overdrive. =(
- ForHackernews 11y ago> “At an average (salary) of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.” Wow, I guess I should've been a truck driver!
- justonepost 11y agoOr not, right?
- fizx 11y agoIt's probably fully-loaded cost, so salary is 50-75% of that, but yes, doing a temporary and undesirable job for a large company in some remote barren location generally pays well.
- enraged_camel 11y agoYep. It's the exact same in Australian mining towns. High school graduates can reliably get a job in the mines that pays north of $150k. The downside obviously is that it's dangerous, not to mention bad for health. But some people jump at the opportunity still.
- Rebelgecko 11y agoThe parens around salary make me think that whoever was quoted originally said "cost" or a more specific term than that. I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the US I believe it's typical for less than half of what a company spends on an employee to be their actual salary (the rest being payroll taxes, benefits, and stuff like that)
- ojbyrne 11y agoThis is a really shitty part of the world to live in.
- bitmapbrother 11y agoIf you're getting paid $200,000 to do drive a set route in a truck then you deserve to be replaced by a robot. The justification for getting paid this much for such a monotonous job is ridiculous. Their union better be sweating.
- anigbrowl 11y agoMaybe, but look at those trucks, they're the size of a building. If you screw up you could do a hell of a lot of damage. I presume the $200k salary is a reflection of the supply & demand for that particular driving skill.
- frozenport 11y agoNone of the risk is bore by the truck driver. If they screw up or destroy the equipment they might be sued for negligence, at worse. Risk of lives is somewhat less compared to slamming a school bus into a busy intersection. It is not clear if the risk is bore by the company because the equipment is insured, maybe they will get higher insurance rates. $200k salary comes from living the middle of nowhere, and indeed the work of the unions. The pay for this kind of a gig has gone up dramatically in the last 3 decades. On the other hand, despite the 200k salary the the industry remains profitable, as they simply stick their hands in the ground and pull out money.
- anigbrowl 11y agoYour response is meaningless. If I'm not willing to pay the going rate for a competent megatruck driver in a remote location, and an incompetent driver wrecks a heap of equipment that ends up costing me millions of dollars, then I may well ask myself why I cheaped out instead of just spending $200k/year on a driver with the desired skillset and experience. I never suggested in any way that such wages were reflective of drivers' costs of doing business or liability insurance, and don't know where you got such an idea. I think the high salary is a function of both the remote location and the particular skills/experience needed to operate a truck that can weigh up to 600 tons when loaded. The trucks themselves cost a few million dollars each, I believe.
- barney54 11y agoOne interesting factoid--women are easier on these trucks better than man. At least that's what the tour guide told me when I toured some of the oil sands a couple years ago. But even thought women are better than men by being easier on the trucks, robots can be as gentle as possible. That is something that isn't discussed as much--robotic control can be as fuel efficient as possible and as easy on equipment as possible. Driverless trucks will not only save labor costs but they will be better on the equipment.