“Trucking is a $700bn industry, in which a third of costs go to compensating drivers”
That’s enough information to answer the question.
Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
11–20 of 192 posts
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#12The approach that Starsky (http://starsky.io/) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile", i.e. the local roads and loading dock work that autonomous vehicles struggle with most. Other advantages include lower fuel costs (driving slower because AVs aren't subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don't need to pay truckers as much if the job is safe and nearby to home).
If the Starsky model ends up dominating, this could all add up to a case where the price of truck transportation drops so much that demand for truck drivers actually increases, possibly even counterbalancing the pressure of individual truckers being able to manage multiple vehicles at once. This would be an example of the "Jevons Effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#13The most likely thing (imo) that will happen will be highway trains...there will be a real human driver in the front of the caravan, maybe just in a van or car, and then 1-10 self driving heavy duty trucks behind them. They'll draft off of each other and do 99% of the long haul route in an automated way.
Once each truck is near it's destination, it will peel off of the pack and park itself near the highway, at which point a real driver will hop in and finish the route.
I work in the telematics space, and work with extremely large fleets that you'd all recognize on the highway every day. None of them are afraid of self driving trucks disrupting them any time soon. However, these automated caravans could be their first opportunity to restructure the flow of their capacity across the country.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#14Depends, do truckers have a strong political lobby? If no, they'll be in trouble. If yes, then they'll be guaranteed to exist for as long as they are funding lobbyists and politicians.
In the United States at least, it's going to be devastating. I don't see a bunch of individual owner-operators banding together to protect their livelihoods. As soon as it's cheaper to run automated trucks, they'll get picked off one by one. Probably the best than can be hoped for is laws mandating a person as co-operator in case of emergency. There's also some version of the last mile problem, where people need to b…
Autonomous trucks may actually be a little more secure. The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin and truckers are strongly encouraged to not stop in this zone. Many still do though, either for legitimate reasons, or they're working with the thieves. Automated trucking will probably fix this problem. You can have automated trucks moving from secured site to secured site without worrying about exceeding a truckers 11 hour drive limit.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#15"Then what you have is a truckers’ lounge with 20 or 30 guys standing around getting paid." THAT's the error: those guys aren't getting paid anything to stand there. They get paid by the mile. Making them wait is benefiting the warehouse, and costing THEM.
Yeah. My wife has a friend who's a long-haul trucker. He gets profoundly disrespected by the current system, including showing up at 8AM to an appointment and being made wait all day, and sometimes into the next day, for his truck to be unloaded/loaded and ready for him to take.
And he's paid nothing for that. There's no penalty at all for wasting the trucker's time. I cite this as evidence that the truckers have no effective lobbying body, and therefore will in fact lose most of long-haul jobs over the next 15 years.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#16The approach that Starsky ( http://starsky.io/ ) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile", i.e. the local roads and loading dock work that autonomous vehicles struggle with most. Other advantages include lower fuel costs (driving slower because AVs aren't subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don't need to pay t…
> this could all add up to a case where the price of truck transportation drops so much that demand for truck drivers actually increases
The problem is that local drivers average about half the pay ($30-40k) vs long-haul drivers ($70-80k). Even if there is more demand for local drivers it likely won't offset the wages lost.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the United States at least, it's going to be devastating. I don't see a bunch of individual owner-operators banding together to protect their livelihoods. As soon as it's cheaper to run automated trucks, they'll get picked off one by one. Probably the best than can be hoped for is laws mandating a person as co-operator in case of emergency. There's also some version of the last mile problem, where people need to b…
Autonomous trucks may actually be a little more secure. The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin and truckers are strongly encouraged to not stop in this zone. Many still do though, either for legitimate reasons, or they're working with the thieves. Automated trucking will probably fix this problem. You can have automated trucks moving from secured site to secured site without worrying a…
They can also lock down the cargo in such a way that it sort of becomes a sort of totally-sealed (automated) roving container. Much like any security, there would be limits into how cheap they can make the container still relatively secure of course (those hijackers are pretty wily and clever!)...but that doesn't seem to be such a logistical challenge in my mind.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#18The approach that Starsky ( http://starsky.io/ ) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile", i.e. the local roads and loading dock work that autonomous vehicles struggle with most. Other advantages include lower fuel costs (driving slower because AVs aren't subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don't need to pay t…
> this could all add up to a case where the price of truck transportation drops so much that demand for truck drivers actually increases The problem is that local drivers average about half the pay ($30-40k) vs long-haul drivers ($70-80k). Even if there is more demand for local drivers it likely won't offset the wages lost.
There are a lot of unknowns here. The factors putting downward pressure on trucker salaries are:
- Remote operation of trucks is an easier lifestyle, so more people would be willing to take the job, driving down salaries
- Fewer human truckers are needed per truck on the road, so for a given level of trucking activity, fewer jobs exist
Some potential countervailing factors:
- Price of trucking plummets, potentially jacking up demand (Jevons Paradox) depending on price elasticity of truck transportation
- Managing multiple vehicles may end up being more cognitively challenging than driving a single truck, reducing the pool of available workers and driving up salaries
The values of these parameters (and how they change over time) will be crucial to determining the net impact to trucker salaries and employment numbers. My intuition is that salaries will go down dramatically, employment numbers will go down modestly, and overall trucking activity will expand.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#19The approach that Starsky ( http://starsky.io/ ) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the "first and last mile", i.e. the local roads and loading dock work that autonomous vehicles struggle with most. Other advantages include lower fuel costs (driving slower because AVs aren't subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don't need to pay t…
Even so, it will devastate the economies of the places they drive through.
Re: Will automation put an end to the American trucker?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the United States at least, it's going to be devastating. I don't see a bunch of individual owner-operators banding together to protect their livelihoods. As soon as it's cheaper to run automated trucks, they'll get picked off one by one. Probably the best than can be hoped for is laws mandating a person as co-operator in case of emergency. There's also some version of the last mile problem, where people need to b…
Autonomous trucks may actually be a little more secure. The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin and truckers are strongly encouraged to not stop in this zone. Many still do though, either for legitimate reasons, or they're working with the thieves. Automated trucking will probably fix this problem. You can have automated trucks moving from secured site to secured site without worrying a…
> The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin ...
Now. The GP point is, if in future thieves find ways to explore truck software and redirect the trucks then current statistics will change.