Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a reality.
I disagree profoundly that self driving trucks are the future, the future is multimodal transport, even now a significant proportion of long haul (greater than 3-600 miles) is already on the rail, either in the form of a container or piggyback.
The issue that keeps the remaining long haul (greater than 600 miles) on the road (vs rail) is timing, when you put something on the rail, you loose a day or so at one end in loading/classifying and another in classifying/unloading. That time loss is something that in all but a few situations can be accommodated for by extra planning - but it requires the planning and consent of the shipper and consignee to do so - the trucking and rail companies are already on board as shipping by rail is much cheaper/easier.
For LTL companies, most of their drivers only run from terminal to terminal, and the distance driven and time spent is much much lower, but even with them, a crossdock transload facility where one side is a truck dock, and the other is a railcar could for example cut down on some logistics pain - but it still would incur additional delay due to the machinations required by the railroad to switch and deliver cars in their network.
Another complicating factor is reefers, right now each refer either has a generator attached (for containers) to it powered by diesel fuel, or has a diesel powered refrigeration unit on the trailer - this for the rail could be replaced by freight trains with HEP (head end power) to power the refrigeration units - but to do so requires a sizable investment by everyone involved (rail cars that support such a system, cans and trailers that support such a system, and transit yards that can supply the power to keep everything cold)
Even with the challenges, in 20-30 years, I'd expect only 10% of truckload miles to be actually hauled end to end by a truck, the rest of it should go on the rail, then be carried the proverbial last mile (in reality couple hundred miles) by a truck.
As a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep schedule.
That's an interesting comment. Modern container ships and the infrastructure that supports them are surely one of the most effective logistical developments in human history, transferring huge volumes of cargo between the ships and road/rail at either end with impressive efficiency. It seems like you're suggesting that road/rail links bring in more of an overhead, despite the lower volumes on a train vs. a ship. Is that a fair conclusion from what you're saying?
If that's reasonably accurate, what do you think causes those extra overheads? Is it the wider variety of loads instead of everything being in standard shipping containers, the need for power to support some of them that you mentioned, or maybe just the need for better loading/unloading systems at road/rail transfers?
I'd put the effort on getting shippers to accept the longer shipment times - a little less JIT inventory for example, its a change that needs to be made at all levels.
I would love a system where the trucks get driven to a lot outside of the city where they get set on a automatic course to the equivalent lot at the destination. During transit no person is onboard at all. At the destination lot a human enters and drives it downtown. If the truck goes to some industrial facility outside the city you shouldn't even need the human driver.
Also I wish there was done way to go after those congress people who are in essence committing murder.
How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry?
It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is, and the only ones that make any money will be the one or two companies with the iPhone apps where you push the button to get your truck.
This is an argument against nearly every technological development ever.
The people running the companies will be looking at labor as a major expense and human employees as a high source of variability and day-to-day complication. Trading labor cost (typically seen as an expense) for fixed asset costs (typically seen as investment) is hugely appealing to a lot of executives.
> It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is [...]
Sure, and buying a $1 lottery ticket is financially equivalent to asking the store clerk to change $1 and then throwing $0.40 into the nearest sewer grate. But everybody buying a lottery ticket thinks they'll one of the few winners. Executives are generally like that too. But worse, because they get to gamble with other people's money and then take a slice of any winnings.
I just don't see this happening. A qualified truck driver costs a trucking company upwards of $30K/year in salary alone. The cost of running a truck capable of driving itself even partially is obviously going to be higher, but at $30K/year + other human-related expenses, it will pay for itself very quickly. Even if regulation drives up the cost a lot it will still be cost-effective to run self-driving trucks.
I think a bigger concern is that self-driving trucks create a high up-front cost and low long-term cost: the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses and make it impossible to start a trucking business.
...financing? An industry as well-understood and predictable as trucking will not want for lenders.
1. Banks may not choose to finance small businesses at all, because they can finance bigger businesses which are a lower risk.
2. If banks do finance small businesses, they charge them higher interest rates than a larger business, again, because a larger, more established business is lower risk. A small business that has to finance at a higher interest rate will have to make larger gross profits to pay their financing costs.
3. Larger businesses may have enough cash on hand that they don't require financing at all, which makes it even harder for small businesses to compete.
I wasn't ignoring financing when I said that high up-front costs and low long-term costs create the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses. Financing simply doesn't solve this problem.
Part of the problem is the assumption that banks control all business lending. (They love that otherwise smart people assume so!) I know an investor who is currently dissatisfied with real estate opportunities available to occupy his considerable wealth. For several years he has been financing, among other things, consumer purchase of water softeners. He actually has to hire someone to examine long lists of loans of several hundred to a thousand dollars! He would love to be able to help a few firms purchase a dozen self-driving tractors apiece, once insurers figure out how it will work.
Various entities have nibbled at the margins of "bank" business for decades now. This is not a phenomenon that will cease before banks themselves do. They only exist because we believe they must.
Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in return for capital to make a living.
In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life.
Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works project. Chinese workers were building a canal. Friedman was struck by seeing everyone digging the canal with shovels. Friedman asked the official, "why no heavy earth-moving equipment?" The official said, "oh, this is a jobs program." So Friedman then says to the official, "then why don't you just give them spoons instead of shovels to create even more jobs?"
Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities
Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities.
Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us.
Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor & lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100% efficiency boost?
Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and truckers-turned-criminals on the street?
Yes, this generalizes to all jobs and the entire economy. It's about time we accepted it.
Even now more and more jobs that are created are jobs that are harmful to society and shouldn't exist in the first place. Imagine a slight modification of your story - that there are two public works projects; one is digging a canal, the other is filling it up. More and more fuel, material and man hours are being used up as both sides gain access to additional workers and better technologies, and yet the canal stays half-built, as one group cancels out the work of the other.
Now replace canal building with advertising industry, and it's exactly what we have today in the real world. Hell, I'd argue that half of the web industry is also such useless waste of time and resources. This is what we get because we still keep the meme that you need to work to be a decent human being. A lot of unsustainable make-believe work. The so-called "bullshit jobs".
It's high time for the world to embrace that jobs are going away, as they should.
There are lots of professions I would be saddened to see made obsolete by automation. Long haul truck driving would not be anywhere on that list.
You realize you're posting this on a site largely dedicated to computer programmers.
Yes I do. And for any programmer (or any other person) who thinks there's even a remote similarity of experience, I invite you to find the most comfortable chair you can and then sit in it 15 hours a day uninterrupted (minus time to run to your local truck stop for a tasty meal) for a month straight watching you tube videos of a highway. And then rest for 1-2 days and repeat. That will give you a not-so-close approximation of the trucker's experience.
Having said all of this, there's an immense challenge/opportunity here for smart hackers to improve the experience of these truckers...they're not going to get replaced by robots anytime soon.
I certainly agree that we're going to need to rework our concepts of work and income to fit a more automated world, but I think that the automation will have to come first, to get people to realize that something needs to be done to make our society more balanced. Artificially limiting the rollout of self driving trucks for the sake of preserving jobs will just cost in lives lost to accidents, and delay what seems to be an inevitable outcome (that trucks will drive themselves and truck driving jobs will start to disappear).
Even so, the handwriting is on the wall: the meat-guided truck-driving era is almost over and will gradually shrink to niches as automated truck driving systems are deployed across fleets.
Perhaps a private person will be able to invest in a private automated truck as investment, trick it out with chrome and send it out in the world to make money while that owner sleeps in?
As a whole, making work less dependent on manpower is progress. And it's a critical failure that societal progress comes with the effect of "devastating lives". And that's because of crappy laws, not because of the technology.
Place the blame where blame is due.
A top surgeon in Boston was recently crushed under a semi in city traffic. The truck should have had sensors that prevent "right hooking" a cyclist, and the driver should be monitored for standards of sleep and on-duty time, and for alertness behind the wheel.
But really, what most people are calling for here would improve truckers' working conditions.