This is why drone technology is very interesting to me. If you have drones flying around that deliver things directly from docks to warehouses, or warehouse to warehouse, not only would it be faster, but potentially safer too (the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population). There's probably a bunch of ways to regulate this as well, such that in the case of disaster, the cost of human life is extremely unlikely.
Trucks Are Killing Us
191–200 of 248 posts
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#192This is why many people believe self-driving trucks will be even more significant than self-driving cars. Especially as we start to commute less as telepresence improves and more jobs can go remote.
I think drones will leapfrog over self-driving trucks. Why even bother having things that drive on roads when you could fly them directly to a warehouse, over hills, forests, rivers, etc?
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#193This is why many people believe self-driving trucks will be even more significant than self-driving cars. Especially as we start to commute less as telepresence improves and more jobs can go remote.
I think drones will leapfrog over self-driving trucks. Why even bother having things that drive on roads when you could fly them directly to a warehouse, over hills, forests, rivers, etc?
I expect ground vehicles win on energy even if you roll in the roads.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Welcome to HN. What are your thoughts on rail as an alternative to trucks?
I am a strong supporter of intermodal; trucks & trains have got to work together. I think that trains are part of the solution to truck driver shortage plus they have lots of other benefits (environmental etc..). I think that there is a great opportunity to make intermodal more efficient and to create more truck/train interface points and to make them more efficient. A lot of work to do. Opportunity for big applicati…
I'm a former OTR driver now working in telecom and as a sysadmin (still with active CDL however).
How do you propose to solve the delay issues at each end of the rail journey, do you think shippers can be made to accept longer transit times? I'd love to see the median length for a TL trip come down to like 150 miles.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#195Driving on I5 from Seattle to Portland is now a long line of semis, one after the other. Trucks, even loaded to the legal limit, cause 9,000 times as much fatigue damage to the road as a car (fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight). It's inefficient and environmentally absurd to use trucks that way. Railroad tracks parallel I5. The solution is to pick the container off the semi, put it on a railcar, do the…
For trips over 150-600 miles (depending on the region), Rail is absolutely the way to go - the issue with rail in say a SEA to PDX (or for that matter a YVR to PDX) trip is the load/unload times at each end, which can add up to more than the total transit time for the freight movement.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's unenforceable with the current infrastructure. In Europe, trucks are required to have chart recorders called tachographs. You put one chart in the machine per day and that's your log. I think this makes it a lot more difficult to keep two logs, and now there are computerized tachograph recorders which should be even more resistant to tampering (ie. they can get the current date and time from a trusted so…
It still doesn't help if you switch driver's schedule from night to day. If monday tuesday and wednesday you drove through the day, and then friday evening they tell you to take a night course, then the tahoraph will say thay you had enough rest, while you will still get sleepy in the middle of night. In other words - tachograph will tell you whether the driver had a break, not whether he slept properly during that b…
It's more or less the same situation you see in health-care providers doing a night shift immediately after the day shift. Not ideal, but they do get more free time to compensate afterwards.
European trucking laws are quite sane. From http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/users/professional... :
"Driving time should not exceed 9 hours a day or 56 hours a week. After 4½ hours, drivers must take a break of at least 45 minutes."
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think drones will leapfrog over self-driving trucks. Why even bother having things that drive on roads when you could fly them directly to a warehouse, over hills, forests, rivers, etc?
I expect ground vehicles win on energy even if you roll in the roads.
I don't think energy is the driving factor.
There are a lot more technical challenges associated with self-driving cars than self-driving drones. Self-driving cars aren't even fully solved at this point. However, even very cheap hobby drones can accurately fly to specific GPS coordinates. Even most plane flights are auto-piloted and even auto-land, so I believe that drones are a lot closer in terms of implementation than self-driving cars.
If there is a business case that determines that drones, while being potentially more energy-intensive, can save a company money due to speed, I believe it will win. For example, imagine Amazon could redistribute inventory between two warehouses with a click of a button and overnight, that sounds like a definite competitive advantage to me.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#198This is why drone technology is very interesting to me. If you have drones flying around that deliver things directly from docks to warehouses, or warehouse to warehouse, not only would it be faster, but potentially safer too (the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population). There's probably a bunch of ways to regulate this as well, such that in the case of disaster, the cost of human life is ext…
>the drone could take paths that have no or minimal human population
You mean like railways?
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#199I'm all for the safety arguments being made by the author but he does paint the trucking industry as this huge money making business when that really isn't the case. Trucking is a very low margin business. These guys live and die based on controlling costs. It's an industry where innovation is very hard because you really need to justify every dollar spent on R&D. Quoting $700B total industry revenue and saying there…
The article bothered me because of the presumption that the author made about hours of service, and 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 - so while you can be compl…
* 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*
Yeah, that is ridiculous, and it would only take some slight adjustment in the dispatch software to keep people on their accustomed schedules. It might require drawing potential drivers from a slightly larger area or something.
It sounds like just about the last thing on these companies minds is the safety of road users. Maybe their needs to be a fine imposed on them for every accident above the already too high non-truck accident rate.
Re: Trucks Are Killing Us
#200> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days.
Please tell me that's a typo. PLEASE tell me that's a typo. 82 hours a week is insanity. Driving any vehicle requires a lot of attention, driving a large one requires a LOT more attention. And I just have a strong certainty that, if it's anything like every other industry, it'll be 82 hours a week, every week, no breaks.
You want accidents and injuries? Make people drive more than 16 hours a day (5 days a week). Or maybe 13.67 hours a day (6 days a week), or even still 11.71 hours a day (7 days a week). Every week.
Wow.