<story><title>Will automation put an end to the American trucker?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/10/american-trucker-automation-jobs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>The long haul stuff should go on rails anyway. It&amp;#x27;s very wasteful to run it on the interstates. The majority of the fatigue damage to the highways comes from trucks, then there&amp;#x27;s all the rubber dust, fuel inefficiency, etc.&lt;p&gt;The trailers should just be picked up and dropped on flatcars, and trucks used for intracity last mile stuff.</text></item><item><author>didgeoridoo</author><text>The approach that Starsky (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;starsky.io&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;starsky.io&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the &amp;quot;first and last mile&amp;quot;, 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&amp;#x27;t subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don&amp;#x27;t need to pay truckers as much if the job is safe and nearby to home).&lt;p&gt;If the Starsky model ends up dominating, this &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; 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 &amp;quot;Jevons Effect&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jevons_paradox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jevons_paradox&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stefan8r</author><text>This is Stefan, from Starsky Robotics.&lt;p&gt;I hear this all the time, and honestly in many cases a truck is the transportation of last resort.  If you need 5 shipping containers of goods going from A-&amp;gt;B all arriving at Time X; it&amp;#x27;s probably going by train.&lt;p&gt;An issue with rail (as pointed out by others) is how to haul the freight from the rail head (rail yard) to the end warehouses, and the extra time it takes to have goods go on two trucks and one train instead of just one truck.  The other issue is that in the US it&amp;#x27;s really hard to hire and retain long haul truck drivers (it turns out most people want to go home each night after a hard day’s work).&lt;p&gt;Competition to hire drivers is fierce, and driver turnover can be 100%&amp;#x2F;yr...which means sometimes your drivers don&amp;#x27;t show up to pull your freight.  Rail is also generally cheaper so if you can put your goods on the train you do.&lt;p&gt;As far as wear and tear on the highway: that&amp;#x27;s what weigh stations are for.  They not only assign usage taxes, they also make sure weight is evenly distributed across the axles to limit damage to the road.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x2F;SSA</text></comment>
<story><title>Will automation put an end to the American trucker?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/10/american-trucker-automation-jobs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>The long haul stuff should go on rails anyway. It&amp;#x27;s very wasteful to run it on the interstates. The majority of the fatigue damage to the highways comes from trucks, then there&amp;#x27;s all the rubber dust, fuel inefficiency, etc.&lt;p&gt;The trailers should just be picked up and dropped on flatcars, and trucks used for intracity last mile stuff.</text></item><item><author>didgeoridoo</author><text>The approach that Starsky (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;starsky.io&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;starsky.io&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) is taking seems to be a promising one. They employ truck drivers as remote pilots for the &amp;quot;first and last mile&amp;quot;, 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&amp;#x27;t subject to operator-hour limits) and probably also lower labor costs (you don&amp;#x27;t need to pay truckers as much if the job is safe and nearby to home).&lt;p&gt;If the Starsky model ends up dominating, this &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; 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 &amp;quot;Jevons Effect&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jevons_paradox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Jevons_paradox&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zspade</author><text>This comment invariably pops up in these threads; If it was going to, it already would have.. It&amp;#x27;s too late now.&lt;p&gt;Would it have been a better solution? Probably, but the investment required (laying down the rails, land buyouts, copious use of emanate domain, political greasing of the wheels, etc...) has always been prohibitive. The gains would be shared between many disparate groups that would need to fund this together, taking years to decades for any ROI - certainly a longer time-frame than most publicly traded, quarterly measured, corporations can afford. At the least this would have required some government subsidization.&lt;p&gt;With driver-less tech around the corner, returns on this investment for any one company become even more dubious, and thus make it less likely to happen. I think the parent comment here will always get some up-votes, but that is as far as I see this going anymore. Maybe it&amp;#x27;d go farther if we threw in words like &amp;#x27;Hyperloop&amp;#x27; ;)</text></comment>