Uber Study Says Self-Driving Trucks Will Result In More Truck Drivers, Not Less (theatlantic.com)

_Sharp'r_ writes: According to a new study by Uber's Advanced Technology Group, widespread adoption of self-driving trucks would happen primarily on long-haul routes. The increase in efficiency would lead to more goods being trucked, causing enough additional local delivery routes driven by humans to overall increase the need for truck drivers. Driver contracts may need to be updated to pay for more time spent waiting/delivering instead of physically driving. "Uber does not believe that self-driving trucks will be doing 'dock to dock' runs for a very long time," reports The Atlantic. "They see a future in which self-driving trucks drive highway miles between what they call transfer hubs, where human drivers will take over for the last miles through complex urban and industrial terrain."

As for how Uber came to this conclusion, they created a model of the industry's labor market based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. "Then, they created scenarios that looked at a range of self-driving-truck adoption rates and how often those autonomous trucks would be on the road in comparison to human-driven vehicles," reports The Atlantic. Uber also calculated the utilization rate of the self-driving trucks. "Basically, if the self-driving trucks are used far more efficiently, it would drive down the cost of freight, which would stimulate demand, leading to more business," reports The Atlantic. "And, if more freight is out on the roads, and humans are required to run it around local areas, then there will be a greater, not lesser, need for truck drivers."

Comments

Anyone checked this?

[mhkohne]

Has anyone reputable checked their work? Because after all that Uber has done, I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if they fudged the numbers.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems counterintuitive, but remember, ATMs didnâ(TM)t kill the local banker; they number of banking cashiers and customer service personnel has skyrocketed.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[q_e_t]

Are you being sarcastic?

Re:Anyone checked this?

[thegarbz]

I wouldn't assume their numbers are fudged. I would assume their assumptions are flawed. Driving down the cost of freight spurring demand would be relevant if last mile freight was even remotely something that limited the purchase of goods.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[alvinrod]

There is some historical precedence to suggest that they're not just making up unreasonable nonsense. You can look back to the start of the industrial revolution and how increases in productivity changed markets that were limited by human labor capacity. A good example is the textile industry where machines were able to replace unorganized individual labors. People always wanted more shirts, more socks, more dresses, but they just couldn't afford them because human labor limited supply and made these goods costly.

Suddenly you had a situation where dozens or even hundreds of these individual laborers could be replaced by a single machine. You might think that this would cause mass unemployment, but it had the opposite effect. Because the cost of cloth and clothing fell, people started buying more of it and the increased demand from consumers resulted in a need for factories the hire more laborers.

What Uber is saying is that when long-haul trucking becomes less expensive and can haul loads in shorter amounts of time because the AI drivers don't need to sleep and can drive the entire route in a single shot, that people are going to want to ship more things. If you can get fresh fruit from Mexico up to Canada in far less time and a far lower cost, then consumers will buy more of it and more of it can be shipped. That means more drivers will be needed for short-haul jobs.

Eventually the AI driving is going to eliminate those short-haul driver jobs as well, but there's still going to be an increase in overall freight hauling and transportation by truck. That likely means a need for new jobs to service those vehicles as well as people to pack and unload the freight, and all manner of other little jobs that spring up along the way as well. Sure it sucks if you're a truck driver, but people in Canada want inexpensive day fresh blueberries more than they want a trucker to personally have a job.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Kjella]

Has anyone reputable checked their work? Because after all that Uber has done, I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if they fudged the numbers.

To be honest this comes down to a lot of assumptions and I doubt you can read this out of the BLS data, which makes that sound a bit like name-dropping. Their primary assumption seems to be that there are many goods we don't transport today because the shipping costs are too high. When you look at all the cheap shit shipped all the way from China that looks implausible. The second thing I'm thinking is that a reduction in transit cost would primarily lead to longer transits, but whether it comes from 100 or 10000 miles away it's still only one local delivery. It works if you assume that instead of going to the store and picking up 10 items I'll have 10 home deliveries.

But if local delivery is the expensive part, why would I do that? It's cheaper that everybody ships to the grocery store and I order one delivery or grab all ten items from the store myself. Same thing with the local post office, they'll store packages up to two weeks so I can drop by once and pick up all of them. It's foolish to assume that a growth in deliverables will lead to a proportional growth in deliveries. In fact, I wish someone would re-invent the robot warehouse as a package mini-pickup point. Basically trucks drop off a ton of packages on one end, they're placed one per bin. On the other end customers enter packageId + PIN or QR code or whatever, it delivers that bin. No staff, open 24x7. I think that'd be a hit...

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Phylter]

You've got a point. Still, the premise makes sense. For the sake of the truckers, I hope it's true though.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Immerman]

Except, pretty much everything we buy is already shipped across the country, if not halfway around the world. Industrialization radically reduced the manufacturing costs, dramatically increasing the buying power of the populace. Shipping costs though are already only a small fraction of the purchase price of most goods - cut shipping costs in half, and you only reduce purchase price by a few percent, and can thus only reasonably expect to increase sales by a few percent.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[alvinrod]

It's not just cutting shipping costs in half, it's increasing the capacity for things that can be shipped. The price of shipping isn't just the physical cost of transportation due to human labor, the vehicle required to do it, etc. but also the amount that purchasers of shipping are willing to pay for those services. If I produce some good and would like to expand my markets, I can only do so if I'm willing to pay more for shipping than those who are currently utilizing those services are currently paying. Trucking companies won't take less money for me because they don't really care about my business.

However, as costs fall and capacity expands, it may now become possible for me to purchase shipping at rates I'm willing to pay which means my produced goods can now be shipped to new markets which potentially means increased revenue for me as well as an opportunity to expand production to supply new demand present in the markets I could not previously reach. Much like people always wanted more textiles, people already want more shipping, but just not at the current prices.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[GezusK]

That's what I was thinking. Even the most basic scenario shows that the math may be off. For example, if a current truck delivery takes 10 hours. Let's say the pick up part takes and hour, and the delivery part takes an hour. So now you have 8hrs that the driverless truck is handling. That frees 1 human driver to do 4 more pick ups and deliveries. Of course, it won't be the same driver at both ends. So 2 drivers will be doing the work of 8?

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Bartles]

Since the beginning of history businesses have been interested in reducing labor costs. Clearly, in the long run reducing labor costs is a good thing.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[mrsquid0]

The increase in the number of jobs in the banking industry probably has more to do with deregulating banks in Canada and the US to allow them to offer a much wider range of financial services. This happened at about the same time that banks were switching from human tellers to ATMs.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[careysub]

There is some historical precedence to suggest that they're not just making up unreasonable nonsense. You can look back to the start of the industrial revolution and how increases in productivity changed markets that were limited by human labor capacity. A good example is the textile industry where machines were able to replace unorganized individual labors. People always wanted more shirts, more socks, more dresses, but they just couldn't afford them because human labor limited supply and made these goods costly. Suddenly you had a situation where dozens or even hundreds of these individual laborers could be replaced by a single machine. You might think that this would cause mass unemployment, but it had the opposite effect. Because the cost of cloth and clothing fell, people started buying more of it and the increased demand from consumers resulted in a need for factories the hire more laborers.

Except that did happen

The factories only employed a very small fraction of the cottage manufacturers, and whom by the way were part of a highly organized piecework network of "putters out" and factors - a different sort of organization but not exactly "unorganized".

Sure sales of thread and cloth (separate commodities at the time) skyrocketed (more on that in a moment). But employment in Britain was still devastated. The major occupation of thread spinning was wiped out in a decade between 1770 and 1780, weaving took a bit longer as it is more complex. Cotton got so cheap it wiped out the woolen industry hitting sheep farmers as well wool processors. Huge numbers of potential factory workers were created by the jobs lost, but only a fraction of factory jobs replaced them. In 1812 textile factories employed 350,000, but the livelihoods of about two million people (out of 11 million) had been ruined. The enormous increase in poverty strained Britain's society for 70 years. In 1820 20% of the entire population of Britain received aid though the Poor law (at a time when any king of assistance from government was an extraordinary measure) and in 1832 the unemployment rate of the 4.5 million urban working class was 50% out of a population of 12 million.

But the growth of cotton manufacture was indeed spectacular. Between 1760 and 1790 alone cotton imports (as Britain grew none) increased 16 times. By that time it was exporting 2/3 of its production (it would eventually rise to 95% or so). Here is the really amazing thing. Britain didn't just wipe out the employment of home spinners and weavers in Britain, it did it throughout the entire world, deindustrializing (as indeed home production is productive industry also) India and China, who had been the world's exporters of cotton cloth for a few thousand years. But despite producing most of the fabric in the world in the early 1800s, it still wasn't enough to employ Britain's working class as productivity had increased 370-fold. Then, as now in the U.S. since 1970, productivity increases were enjoyed by the business.

Note that the automation of truck driving has limited capacity to increase employment through knock-on factors. Sure, as shipping gets cheaper, its use will increase to some extent. But people aren't going to just be getting "stuff moved" because shipping is cheap. For the most part cost of shipping is found in the cost of products you buy. Reducing that cost will increase profits/reduce prices to some extent, but is that going dramatically increase the amount of stuff you buy? No it is not.

And unlike the British cotton that could be sold all over the world, shipping in the U.S. is not an exportable commodity (though it will make our overall economy somewhat more competitive.

And there are a coupe of other things that makes me very suspicious about this "truck driving will increase overall".

First there is a trial of such a system operating right now and the truck drivers are "drone operators", sitting in an office. The arrival time of trucks (and their delivery schedule) is well known, so

Re:Anyone checked this?

[careysub]

Dang it: Except that did NOT happen of course.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[careysub]

Bingo! You posted this before I finished my (carefully researched) post here which includes this crucial observation.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[dryeo]

Except it took about 70 years or 3 generations for employment to recover. 3 generations of chronic unemployment with about the only saving grace being the new world, with lots of almost free land, to emigrate (or be deported to) to.
Things were better during the automation that happened at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th, when the labour surplus was handled by things like child labour laws, shorter work weeks and changing women's role into stay at home moms leading to a smaller labour participation number and higher employment.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[alvinrod]

Yes, and when the automobile was invented it devastated carriage makers, ranchers raising horses, farriers, and all manner of other industries, but you're surely not saying that we should turn back the clock and eliminate automobiles. The world is always in flux and new innovation is always replacing something that previously existed and disrupting the economy as a result. You can look at any point in history and find examples such as telephone switchboard operators, ice cutters, chandlers, and countless others including the massive number of railway jobs that have been supplanted by the birth and growth of the aviation industry.

It's certainly painful for the people who's jobs have become obsolete, but the world has not collapsed as a result of those previous upheavals and there's not a compelling reason to think that the next will be any different. Some small groups will be dissatisfied, but the majority will be better off than previously and new types of jobs will spring up that have only been made possible by the same advances in technology that have lead to loss of employment.

People get too caught up in looking at disparities in wealth (not to say that they're completely unimportant as there are some studies linking the Gini coefficient to increased rates of crime) or how a small number of people are now facing some hardship that they didn't before. Instead it's necessary to look at how conditions are changing for everyone relative to where they were before. I recently saw a homeless person with a cheap Android phone. Sure he's still homeless and life is not great, but globalization and lowering prices have made this kind of technology accessible to even the poorest members of society whereas previously it was not.

Someday the world may change and it could suck to be you or I as what we've done becomes obsolete. However, I don't think that the future generations two hundred years from now will consider themselves worse off for the progress of humanity and the improvements in the standards of living that it brings.

And consider the incredible local traffic impact if all the truck driving now going on a highways really was more than replicated on surface streets!

Also consider the number of construction jobs that will be necessary to replace old streets with ones better able to handle this or to make additional repairs do to increased utilization, or the manufacture, sale, and use of delivery vehicles that are smaller and do not damage the roads. Changes rarely happen in a vacuum and it's incredibly hard to see what the effects are going to be or the next set of problems that they will cause. A few might decide to lay down and die, but the species marches onward as it has in the face of new and changing problems since before our recorded history. There's always a new generation that's willing to charge headlong into the fray even if the previous one has been disgruntled and bitter as a result of changes.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Immerman]

Exactly - it reduces your shipping costs. You could already whatever you want shipped today, it would just cost a bit more, meaning you'd have to charge a bit more. There is no shipping capacity shortage in this country, except at any particular price point. If all you're doing is selling something that people wouldn't buy at a slightly higher price point, then you're not generating any extra wealth, you're just redirecting purchases that would have been made for something else instead.

It makes absolutely no difference what a selling company's capacity is - only what the *consumers'* collective purchasing capacity is. And that will change only by the amount that prices are lowered. If shipping costs were 50% of the sale price of something then cutting the cost substantially would make a big difference - but there's almost nothing where that's the case.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[q_e_t]

I'm in the UK. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...

In 1990, there were 17,637 bank branches but the network had shrunk to just under 12,000 by 2003.

This year Barclays indicated it could shrink its 1,600-strong branch network by 25pc, meaning 400 could close, and is piloting a scheme to move high street branches into Asda superstores.

The above may explain my previous comment.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[_Sharp'r_]

Has anyone reputable checked their work?

From The Atlantic article:

In the end, every expert I talked to for this story, from the teamsters to academia, believes that the broad strokes of Uber’s analysis have some merit and represent a potential positive path for autonomous trucking to play in the labor market.

You know a staff writer for a left-wing magazine who is (for example) the author of "Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology" is going to do anything they can to come up with arguments to dispute Uber's study. He talked to the Teamsters Union and left-wing academics and couldn't find anyone who could find big flaws in the study.

Re:Anyone checked this?

[_Sharp'r_]

At current pay rates the industry is short 36,500 drivers. That's projected to get worse over time as the current drivers age out, because they're having a more and more difficult time replacing them with new drivers. Long haul trucking is a lousy long-term job, with many drivers away from home as much as 200 days out of the year. Those drivers would much rather work local routes, where they can go home at night.

Effectively, the efficiency gains from self-driving trucks comes from "team" driving and convoys. Instead of a real "team", the driver can sleep on the road as-if there is another driver, but use automation instead to create the required rest breaks. Between popular hubs, one of those single-driver "teams" can run the lead truck while several other trucks are programmed to automatically follow. Just being able to follow like that reduces fuel costs for a convoy of five trucks by 6%.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[AutodidactLabrat]

And also caused the 2007 crash and subsequent depression
When deregulation hits the ultimate victims you can be sure no one will mention it was deregulation which caused the problem

Re:Anyone checked this?

[Miamicanes]

I can think of one area where reduced costs of long-haul trucking could result in exponentially greater utilization by consumers: storage. Especially if electric trucks had enough battery capacity to recharge in places where electricity is cheaper than nearby areas. Right now, we already HAVE "cube" storage... but the cubes themselves are still stored somewhere semi-nearby. If the cost of trucking those cubes 250 miles were only slightly greater than the cost of trucking those cubes 20 miles, instead of storing those cubes in warehouses that are only slightly cheaper than the area where they came from (say, New Jersey vs Manhattan), you can send them to a vast, sprawling, robotic storage facility out in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. It's kind of a contrived example, but shows how if something becomes cheap and easy enough, brute-force solutions that would be cost-prohibitive NOW can become financially viable.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[morethanapapercert]

I think an overlooked factor in that change in bank branch deployment is the lack of need for a huge honkin' vault to store cash reserves and safety deposit boxes. With the advent of ATMs and broad uptake of point of sale debit machines, your local branch just doesn't need to store as much cash as it did 20 or 30 years ago. The tellers at my local branch no longer keep a 500$ float in their tills. They have only about 50$ or less in coins each. All the bills they require are stored in one or two central ATM like cash dispensing machines. Those machines get tucked into the vault at night I'm sure, but only because they still have one that was installed in the 40's. Some of those pop-up mall and corner banks just have what amounts to a reinforced room and no safety deposit boxes. Those smaller branches only need to keep a small amount of funds on hand, not enough to justify the expense and floor space needed for a proper vault. Any time they need more than what they have on hand, armoured couriers can have it there in a few hours. Because of those wide spread ATM's everywhere, the armed and armoured transport industry has also boomed, bringing down the costs of shuttling cash around.

Re: Anyone checked this?

[Darinbob]

The jobs of the tellers and the versatility of the banks has changed. A lot of tellers used to do just what ATMs do. That job diminished (not vanished though, there are some who avoid ATMs). Today though there is a lot more activity at the bank other than depositing and withdrawing money. People are investing more as individuals, as there are more than just basic savings accounts being used by normal people. Tellers that went away were replaced with more financial consultants, mortgage professionals, and back office workers to process the cash and checks collected by the ATMs.

Online services haven't replaced them either. Anyone with any sense knows that the internet isn't safe, the bank's online security lags behind even social media companies in many instances. I think younger people using mobile phones for transactions has started to eliminate some jobs,though the safety of such is a bit of a concern.

or we could ship by rail.

[Anonymous Coward]

and avoid the road congestion, and wear/tear on our publicly funded roads.

or we could continue to set up our tax policy to favor subsidizing the trucking industry. Trucks should only be used for short deliveries and the start/beginnings of journeys to/from depots.

Re: or we could ship by rail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly the point I was going to state. This is known science and the solution was rail. Hub and spoke main lines. Local distributor from fixed points.

Trucking arise from the belief Rockefeller and his family needed to sell more oil. Rail was too efficient for them to make more money so it had to die. Nothing more.

Re: or we could ship by rail.

[q_e_t]

To be fair, rail killed itself to some extent, or its ability to expand, due to a series of investment scandals.

Re:or we could ship by rail.

[Mashiki]

Rail doesn't deliver to the dock like that. On top of that, you'd have to start building new massive docks to bring everything in for local hauls. Then you're also going to have to convince every business around that JiT(Just in Time) transport is economically infeasible and it's cheaper to have giant warehouses full of things instead of rolling trucks from a centralized dock to smaller warehouses, then directly out to shipping. We've been down this road before, the reason why trucks are cheaper is because they first count as a "warehouse" to store good in transport. Second it's by-far cheaper then trains, I mean really cheap. Third, trucks don't require specialized "track" to deliver into particular areas. That means you don't need to subsidize for remote communities for instance, a plain old gravel road will get things in and out.

The trucking industry doesn't get much in the way of "favor subsidizing" on top of that, it gets heavier taxes for everything from fuel(to pay for those roads), to extra taxes on tires one of the reasons retreads on trailers are popular vs new tires, is because the taxes are less. Plus massive environmental fees for maintenance and so on. On the other hand, the rail industry gets massive tax subsidies and in several cases the government have "picked up the cost" for remote communities rail link.

I don't buy it

[PeeAitchPee]

With all of the competition and millions and millions of miles of testing being done to get it right, why couldn't the machines run dock to dock? Aside from zero-visibility weather conditions (i.e., snow and torrential rain), the AI's already very good -- sometimes even better than people under the same conditions as we don't have GPS and a bunch of the other sensors these new vehicles have. I think this is anti-FUD by Uber; why, I'm not sure.

Re:I don't buy it

[vtcodger]

"the AI's already very good "

It has to be a **LOT** better than "very good". If your truck runs over a 3rd grader walking to school, you're going to wish you'd thrown that Uber salesman under a moving eighteen-wheeler.

That said, truck terminals could be, and likely will be, built with or at expressway entrances/exits

As for job creation ... About as likely as the five million great green jobs Barack Obama promised us in 2008. Nothing against Obama -- I voted for him ... twice. He may well have been sincere. But I thought in 2008 that those jobs were illusory. And AFAICS, they were..

Re:I don't buy it

[Hal_Porter]

I think this is anti-FUD by Uber; why, I'm not sure.

If the consensus view is that Uber will render human drivers obsolete and truck drivers unemployed then the odds are that various interest groups will organise and lobby to get regulatory changes to drive them out of business.

So Uber have spent what to them is pocket change to fund studies showing more Uber robotrucks means more jobs of truck drivers. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant to them. However I bet if you ever see an Uber spokesperson asked about 'What will happen to truck drivers? Won't they all lose their jobs?" they'll of course reference this study.

And if you pay people to do a study which assumes that 'dock to dock' runs are infeasible due to the state of AI but Uber trucks driving to transport hubs increase the amount of parcels delivered, it seems logical to assume that there'd need to be human truck drivers doing the last mile delivery to and from the transport hubs.

Of course it's far from clear that assumption is true. Tesla and Google both seem pretty confident that you can have self driving cars which do go dock to dock. If they can do it, there's no reason Uber can't.

However for PR reasons the've paid for some astroturf research based on the assumption that isn't possible because it comes up with the result that the future is bright for truck drivers.

I guess all it shows is that if you have a pile of cash you can hire some pretty smart PR people.

Re:I don't buy it

[vtcodger]

Actually, the energy industry provides quite a few jobs, and many of them pay well. Longterm, I'm a fan of solar, but I think it's capabilities are currently rather oversold. I'm far from convinced that roughnecking a drilling rig is a worse job than crawling around on a roof installing solar panels. Falling off a roof is unlikely to be the high point of one's day..

Re:I don't buy it

[sjames]

Other factors need checking as well. Is the demand for freight actually limited currently by the cost of freight? After all, people only eat so much food, and if it suddenly costs half as much to receive it by freight, we won't suddenly eat twice as much.

Second, is the price of freight driven by the cost of truckers, or is it "value priced". If the cost of long-haul truckers goes away, will the freight companies actually reduce their prices or will the shareholders and executives simply pocket the difference?

Next up, will those local deliveries be done by truckers or will the freight companies just hire a bunch of minimum wage guys and use trucks that can be driven on a regular drivers license?

Re:I don't buy it

[HuguesT]

Very good but not that good yet, aside from rigged demos.

Re:I don't buy it

[mrsquid0]

> "the AI's already very good "
>
> It has to be a **LOT** better than "very good". If your truck runs over a 3rd grader walking to school, > you're going to wish you'd thrown that Uber salesman under a moving eighteen-wheeler.

Fortunately no human driver has ever run over a 3rd grader.

Re:I don't buy it

[fluffernutter]

This might be a valid point once *anyone* can demonstrate an AI that actually does as well as a human in any circumstance. Otherwise they are all sounding a bit too hasty to use this technology.

Re:I don't buy it

[mrsquid0]

An AI does not need to do as well as a human in any circumstance. A self-driving car only needs to do as a human driver in the circumstances where the self-driving car is being used. I doubt that there will be self-driving cars in Whitehorse until long after they are ubiquitous in Phoenix because the different nature of driving in those two cities. If an AI cannot operate a vehicle as well as a human in some environments then just don't use them in those environments.

Re:I don't buy it

[fluffernutter]

So in other words, long distance truckers only need to worry about losing routes that are fully within the no-snow belt. Oh wait, didn't Florida get snow this year?

Re:I don't buy it

[Hognoxious]

After all, people only eat so much food, and if it suddenly costs half as much to receive it by freight, we won't suddenly eat twice as much.

I thought you were an American?

Re:I don't buy it

[mrsquid0]

If we had waited until automobiles could do everything that a horse can we would still be waiting.

Re:I don't buy it

[fluffernutter]

There was money to build infrastructure for automobiles when automobiles were invented.

Uber is a reliable source now?

[QuietLagoon]

Give me a break.

Re:Uber is a reliable source now?

[QuietLagoon]

...but they peer reviewed this research internally....

So they asked themselves if their research was valid, and they told themselves that it was valid. Do they plan to take that comedy show on the road?

Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Hasaf]

Here is the problem, truck drivers make a descent middle class wage. They also support a wide number of ancillary jobs. There are also a large number of regulations in place to insure their, and the public's safety.

Uber is, essentially, saying that nearly all of them can all become delivery drivers. The trouble there is that delivery drivers are often contract employees who, when all costs are considered, frequently earn less than the minimum wage. The also, frequently work more hours than is safe. Everyone pays for this.

So, the best case is that we strip people out of one of the largest industries in America, and put them into sub minimum wag jobs. This ignores that the economy is driven by aggregate spending. Sure, for a while it looks good as prices are driven down and efficiency goes up. As long as people take on debt, trying to avoid the loss in lifestyle that will eventually come. However, the bill eventually comes due, we saw that in the Global Financial Crisis.

We are seeing a slow train wreck and denying that it is crashing. This is happening because we, as a society, want to hold onto the myth that is "the magic of markets." The markets have never been able to work when left alone. The faith that they will, this time, is misguided.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[hipp5]

Here is the problem, truck drivers make a descent middle class wage.

And yet, not enough people want to do this job: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/576752327/trucking-industry-struggles-with-growing-driver-shortage

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[wonkavader]

A. You're right, and the article acknowledges that these jobs currently suck.
B. Look again. This is a classic short-term analysis we see all the time on automation. Look forward past the first step. Improvements will increase in self-driving (probably very rapidly) until no one will be driving those local deliveries. Anyone actually on the truck will have a different job: security guard.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[vtcodger]

"Markets work just fine when left alone."

You're kidding, right? Let me quote Michael Crichton

""... the fact is, free markets don't provide safety. Only regulation does that. You want safe food, you better have inspectors. You want safe water, you better have an EPA. You want a safe stock market, you better have the SEC. And you want safe airlines, you better regulate them, too." M Crichton, Airframe,1996"

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Chris Mattern]

Let me quote Michael Crichton

Because when you need bulletproof economic analysis, you should always go to a fiction writer.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[argStyopa]

I don't think so.

The trucking business has been sub replacement-rate on drivers for at least a dozen years - since substantially before the 2007 crash. If truck drivers were making a "decent middle class wage" this wouldn't be the case. Route pricing has been flat for a decade and the industry itself is in a somewhat-ridiculous 28th quarter of contraction with 000's (yes, thousands) of trucking companies shuttering every quarter. (Note, most of these of course are single-person or 2-person "companies" of course. But there's a decent number of actual corps in that carnage too.)

Older, experienced drivers have ALREADY largely left the business. Your typical truck driver today is an immigrant with something less than 30 hours of road time under his belt.

I can certainly see the long-haul trucking business being automated, with trucks discharging into 'pools' outside metro areas, for a local 'pilot' to hop in and do the in-town delivery. That seems simple and makes perfect sense. You are right that 'courier' drivers do often make minimum wage or less, particularly when one considers the terrible sharecropping-equivalent lease-to-own programs they use to hook the ignorant. But local semi-truck drivers are a different deal: that's a pretty highly sought-after gig because you get a salary (not paid per mile like long-haulers, who have seen a direct cut to their income by about 30-40% thanks to Obama-era new safety requirements and ELD) and you get to have a home and family you see. Until now, the demand for them has largely been flat (no trucking company lives on local deliveries; it's all longhaul).

What I think is interesting is IF this model goes into effect, this will incentivize the largest corporations to build their plants very remotely, near major arteries but far outside of urban development...in that sense, they could operate their own 'pools' and be an actual node on the system, meaning no need for the local delivery - but where would they get employees? And they'd still ultimately need to deliver their product into metropolises to the consumers.

Economy-shaking, for sure.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[gurps_npc]

You have made a lot of assumptions there. First, you failed to realize that the jobs will change. The nature of the entire business will shift and it is quite possible that the delivery driver job could change and become a better job, particularly if we insist on regulating it, the way we regulate long haul driver jobs.

Second, we are not 'denying it is crashing' in any way shape or form. Lots of people are talking about it.

Third, we are not holding onto the myth of the markets, instead we are holding on to a LONG history of:

a) Jobs becoming replaced by technology is not new. Damn, no one is buying my hand knapped flint knives any more, those bronze shmucks stole my jobs... iron stole my jobs.... steel...stainless steel ... titanium knives... ... lightsaber (ok, that last one may take some more time.)

b) We almost always ended up with MORE JOBS. not less. Better, quicker, tech means more uses for the tech, as this article correctly pointed out.

It's not about the market, it's about millennia of history.

And most importantly, you are making a simple, key, STUPID mistake - jobs have nothing to do with need. We don't hire people to fulfill a set need. We don't need disney movies, starbucks coffee, etc

Jobs are about WANT, and humans are greedy suckers. Give us all a sex-bots and we will demand two so we can have a threesome. Work will always expand to fill human desires because it is endless.

But there are transition pains where old skills are no longer needed and we have to figure out which new skills will be essential. The key to remember is that these are temporary, not permanent.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[arth1]

Markets work just fine when left alone.

No, they don't. In an unregulated market, the end result is monopolies. Bigger fish eat the smaller fish, and you'll be left with a single company. It's the natural conclusion to free markets.

Regulation is needed to ensure that the small guys can enter the playing field and not be eaten, not have their market poisoned by those who can afford it, and that monopolies and oligopolies don't form.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the quote and understand it. Is it wrong? If so, debate why instead of pulling an ad hominem.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[qwerty shrdlu]

I don't think so.

Older, experienced drivers have ALREADY largely left the business. Your typical truck driver today is an immigrant with something less than 30 hours of road time under his belt.

So no typical truck driver makes it to the second week?

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[q_e_t]

You mean minding the dog that's there to stop the operative interfering with the SecuroBot 3000, surely?

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[magzteel]

Let me quote Michael Crichton

Because when you need bulletproof economic analysis, you should always go to a fiction writer.

His writing was brilliant. He was gone way too young.

This was a great speech
https://stephenschneider.stanf...

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[vtcodger]

"Because when you need bulletproof economic analysis, you should always go to a fiction writer."

May I take it then, that you think Ayn Rand had nothing worthwhile to say to the world? If so, we agree on something.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[sjames]

Actually, they don't. Consider "value pricing". It's everywhere these days even though in theory the market would squash it like a bug.

Markets must be regulated in order to work well. Note that a regulated market is not a command economy.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[vtcodger]

Seriously, I think it depends on the market. In many (too many if you ask me) markets, it works exactly as you describe -- monopoly, regulatory capture, awful product quality, etc,etc,etc.. In others, it doesn't. Example-restaurants -- there are a zillion of them and, while big chains hold a large chunk of the market here in the US, there are a lot one-of shops that hold on and make a living for the owner and a few employees. There's a certain amount of regulation by health departments. But that's sort of tangential.

Anyway, I don't have any problem with free markets when they work. But I think anyone who thinks that free markets are a panacea is in need of psychiatric help.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Mashiki]

And yet, not enough people want to do this job:

Two fold problem: First there's more freight being shipped then before. The other problem is in the US, the previous administration stacked on so many regulations, requirements, and so on that the average person simply refuses to put up with it. Burnout is common, not from the driving, but because of the absurd amount of regulations. If you have XM radio, listen to Road Dog Trucking the people driving during the call-in segments go on quite often how these regulations hurt them.

Read this for example. Let me give an example that isn't covered. Let's say you're going to be on for 10hrs/day, you pull into the dock and for whatever reason you spent 8hrs sitting there so you simply go to sleep. Well, under the new regulations that 8hrs sitting in the dock counts towards the time you're on the road. So you can only drive 2hrs. Now if you know anyone in the industry, you'll start hearing about "dock time" pay and so on, because if your truck isn't rolling you aren't earning money even if it's a company truck.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Kjella]

And yet, not enough people want to do this job:

Not surprised... a relative of mine is a long haul truck driver, he's slept more nights in the sleeper berth at the back of this truck than in his real bed the last 20 years. Very often he's supposed to be somewhere at start of business or pick up before end of business so driving everything from early mornings to late evenings all according to the schedule and rest hours, which often eats into both Fridays and Sundays. Even nurses and doctors working shifts or pilots flying short haul typically get to go home at night. Not to mention the office workers... it's probably most comparable to people working long work tours on ships, military, oil platforms and such but they usually do it for a period of their life then transition to a desk job. Is it possible to combine with a home life and family? Yes, but it's certainly not easy.

Basically you end up being a semi-absentee parent who's not there for the day-to-day chores and while that might have been more accepted before fewer dads want it and few moms ever wanted it, no wonder it's 94% males. I just can't picture the mom of a 4yo being on the road all week and basically dropping in for the weekends. Compared to me I have to be at the office from 9 AM to 2:30 PM Monday through Friday. The rest of the hours I choose except for meetings and such, I can start from 6 AM and work until 9 PM (but max 12 hours/day) if I want. Is that a *huge* perk of the job? Yes. I wouldn't have a trucker's schedule if you doubled my salary.

Re: Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[mapkinase]

High wage and unions. Two reasons for ubers to get rid of you ASAP, right there.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[fluffernutter]

Another example of a job that just doesn't get enough reward for the effort.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

If an unregulated market results in monopolies, how come the closest things we have to longer term monopolies in the U.S. are all the result of government laws and regulations, but we don't have any monopolies which aren't being enforced by government regulation? Empirical reality doesn't match your assertion, but it does match economic theory.

Higher levels of regulations are what economists call a barrier to entry. Barriers to entry reduce competition, they don't increase it. Large companies love regulatory barriers to entry because they can afford to siphon off some overhead to deal with it, while they know a startup trying to compete with them doesn't have the extra cash and established expertise lying around to deal with all the regulations they have to comply with. Not to mention that regulations are written (with the help of industry insiders) to assume things will be done how the large companies already do them, creating a barrier to someone coming along and doing things differently and changing the business model on them.

Re: Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[R3d M3rcury]

My roommate used to work as a truck driver in the mid-2000s. They payed her to go to school to learn how to drive a truck. Doesn't sound like they had a surplus of people...

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[argStyopa]

If you think that the bulk of a driver's time is spent DRIVING you don't really even begin to understand what you're talking about.

Typically there are 2 free hours to load, 2 free hours to unload at for every delivery (even if LTL), which means that run needs to be 200-250 miles to even be 50% of their time driving. And this is discounting the hours they may spend down (basically doing nothing) between last drop and next pick.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[argStyopa]

No, I mean ACTUAL new rules.

https://www.foleyservices.com/...

Understand what you're talking about before you comment.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[argStyopa]

Or, for this to be true, one would have to understand that the majority of a driver's time is not necessarily spent driving on the road.

2 hours load, 2 hour unload for every shipment, plus all the down time waiting for the next pickup to be available. Plus required resting hours.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Uberbah]

The other problem is in the US, the previous administration stacked on so many regulations, requirements, and so on that the average person simply refuses to put up with it.

Corporatist whackjobbery.

Let's say you're going to be on for 10hrs/day, you pull into the dock and for whatever reason you spent 8hrs sitting there so you simply go to sleep. Well, under the new regulations that 8hrs sitting in the dock counts towards the time you're on the road.

Oh, the horror. You're required to be on your job for eight hours....and....it counts towards your work day!

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Uberbah]

And yet, not enough people want to do this job for peanuts

Fixed the corporatist speak for you. If there's a labor shortage, offer the labor more compensation and the "problem" will quickly take care of itself. This is just like all those "we have a nursing shortage" articles in local newspapers that miraculously never talk about hospitals and nursing homes offering more compensation to attract more employees.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Uberbah]

Very witty. But where is he wrong:

• "... the fact is, free markets don't provide safety. Only regulation does that. You want safe food, you better have inspectors. You want safe water, you better have an EPA. You want a safe stock market, you better have the SEC. And you want safe airlines, you better regulate them, too."

When corporations like GM and DuPont are happy to go on letting dozens of people die when saving them would cost a few pennies on the profitable dollar (faulty ignitions and waste disposal) it's hard to contest the point.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Mashiki]

Corporatist whackjobbery.

So you're not disputing anything I've said. Brilliant.

Oh, the horror. You're required to be on your job for eight hours....and....it counts towards your work day!

No, it counts towards your *driving day* not your work day. You work day could be as much as 15hrs/day. Think of it this way, you work a 9-5 job. You get up at 6am, and the clock now starts ticking. So, by 7-7:30 you're on the road, now you get stuck in traffic and don't roll in until 10. Now you've already burned through 4hrs of work time, and you have another 4hrs of work you're allowed to do. So you only get to work until 2pm. Then you get to sit there for another 3 hours doing nothing before you're allowed to go home. Now you're not getting paid for that 3 hours, but you still have to sit there. You also weren't paid for that time you sat in traffic either.

See? This isn't rocket surgery. Maybe you should go be a driver for awhile, or actually learn what's happening.

Re: Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[Mashiki]

They still were still paying for school all through the 2008 crash. Even with the drop in rates(you could see a high as $1.10/mile in the US pre-2008, the demand for drivers was there. Right now top-rate companies are paying $0.72/mile plus layover time during dock/time down for repairs and so on.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

how come the closest things we have to longer term monopolies in the U.S. are all the result of government laws and regulations

The ones that come to mind, like electrical power companies, are natural monopolies that have therefore been regulated, not monopolies that have been created by regulation. I'm sure there's a few of those, but you have the causation wrong on most regulated monopolies.

but we don't have any monopolies which aren't being enforced by government regulation

Microsoft comes immediately to mind. Coming up with turkeys like Vista and Windows 8 and Windows 10 doesn't really cost them market share, showing that the desktop OS business is a monopoly not created by regulation.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

So you're saying that the average turnover is less than two months?

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly and does change in market share. In fact, if you look at consumer computing devices as a whole, instead of focusing only on classic style desktops, Microsoft has dropped way more.

The history of electrical utilities is that as soon as the government lightened up regulations to allow more competition, more competition happened. That's a pretty strong argument that it's been the regulation saying no one is allowed to compete in an area driving the lack of competition, not the other way around. Electrical generation is a lot more competitive now that the government allows it. The government still enforces local monopolies in electrical distribution. Why do they need to make that legally enforced if it's a natural monopoly, meaning no competition would arise if it wasn't illegal? Back in reality, there is still competition creeping in from local solar and natural gas installations who setup right where the power is needed, rather than using the monopolized distribution lines. It's pretty bold to claim "No competition could naturally arise, so therefore we must make any competition illegal!" That contradicts itself, as there would be no need to make competition illegal if it was actually a case of a natural monopoly.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

Microsoft has a monopoly in enterprise desktop computing. It isn't a 100% market share, but it's enough.. The biggest changes in making money were due to the development of the tablet, and the fact that systems are satisfactory for a lot longer than they were in the 90s. Making an inferior product in their main area doesn't hurt them much, if at all. (Making an inferior product when they're trying to move into an area is different, as seen from the Surface write-off.) A monopoly is judges as one by how it works, not the market share (although you're not going to get a monopoly without a large market share).

Deregulating the production of power was likely a good thing, although some of the deregulation changes haven't been good. The last-mile distribution network is a natural monopoly, so it's regulated. There is, as you point out, competition for supplying power at a given point, but not in running wires to everywhere.

I haven't looked. Are there actual regulations giving the electric company a monopoly, or is it just correctly assumed that nobody else is going to come in? Cable companies no longer have guaranteed monopoly status, which doesn't stop them from being monopolies.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

Microsoft has a monopoly in enterprise desktop computing. It isn't a 100% market share, but it's enough.

If it isn't 100% market share, if it's not exclusive, if there is more than one place you can get it, then by definition it's not a monopoly. You may need to revise your terms to be clearer about what you mean, as the word monopoly has a specific definition. Perhaps you mean something like "market leader", instead?

In terms of being granted a distribution monopoly, you can get a legal overview here, but while the process varies a little from State to State and the Feds get involved if it goes interstate, you can't compete in the market because the Public Utility Commission (PUC) in the State must permit your actions first and they set your prices for you. While some PUCs allow competition in generation, AFAIK, none allow actual competition in distribution.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

There are definitions of monopoly that don't require 100% market share. They're in general more useful, because they define monopolies by their effects, rather than by specifying a criterion none of them meet. If you took micro-economics, you probably remember the difference between market prices and monopoly prices. Being a market leader is not the same thing, since if a market leader screws up people will go to the competition. When Microsoft screws up, people complain and still buy MS Windows and MS Office, for the most part.

Do you actually want electrical distribution competitions? Do you want two companies running wires everywhere? For above-ground distribution, it's necessary to space out wires. Power poles have crossbars, to keep physical distance between the neutral wire and the power wire(s) (it's normally distributed in three currents 120 degrees out of phase with each other, but individual phases can split off). Underground wire means more digging things up. It's going to be expensive.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

In regards to what is defined as a monopoly, I gave you a link to a dictionary. Please provide some evidence or link to something which shows the word monopoly means something different. Otherwise, you're just talking about your own personal definition, which may mean something to you, or some obscure some-people-use-it-this-way definition, but it isn't what the rest of the world typically means by the word. You talk about monopoly price, but again, the linked source states explicitly "A monopoly price is set by a monopoly. A monopoly occurs when a firm is the only firm in an industry producing the product, such that the monopoly faces no competition."

To answer your second question, yes, I'd prefer the opportunity for legal electrical distribution competition. That way if it makes financial sense for two market participants to make an electrical distribution deal, they legally can, while if it doesn't benefit them, they don't have to. It's called freedom. If it's truly a natural monopoly, then we'll be right where we are with the regulators preventing it, but with the bonus that if they try to make too many monopoly profits, or their customer service sucks too bad, or whatever the issue becomes, someone can decide it's worth competing with them. If it's not a natural monopoly (and in at least some cases, it's not, like where someone puts in a local solar or gas plant to serve a specific need and wants to sell the excess to their neighbors), then people will benefit. What's wrong with consenting adults making market decisions about what they want for themselves?

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

I'll just go with your cite, which lists as its first definition "exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of price". Note the "or" there. Only one of the conditions need be true for something to be a monopoly as defined in the dictionary site you provided. That means that Microsoft is a monopoly if it has sufficient control to manipulate prices.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

So you're saying Microsoft controls the prices of all desktop operating systems? Funny, it seems like they only determine their own product price, like every other non-monopoly. Otherwise, it seems Mac OS X. Linux, etc... would have different pricing. Try again.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

Microsoft controls the price on enterprise laptops and desktops. CIOs complain and pay it as a cost of doing business. There are usually good reasons not to go to Mac or Linux.

Find an economist, and ask him or her to explain monopoly pricing and economic monopolies to you.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

So what you're saying is that you just keep narrowing your definition of the market Microsoft supposedly has a monopoly on until you can try and make a case for it.

Guess what, Microsoft doesn't control the price there either, because alternatives exist (and are used). Yeah, most companies have sunk costs and other considerations for wanting to stay Windows if it's not too expensive, but if Microsoft started charging $1000 per MS Windows license, almost every company would switch to an alternative (and here's the key point) rather than just stop using a laptop/desktop, because alternatives do exist. Plenty of large enterprises actually offer non-MS options for employees who prefer them.

So Microsoft doesn't control the pricing, they have to take into account what their customers are willing to pay without them going to the competition instead.

And I don't need to "find" an economist, I just need to look in the mirror to see one. Your desperation in losing this debate is showing....

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

I am narrowing the group so that it can be clearly seen to be monopoly pricing, and hence a monopoly according to the definition we're using. The monopoly extends further, but I'm just establishing that there is one.

Monopoly pricing doesn't mean that the monopolist can force the customers to pay anything. If you study basic micro, there's the supply-demand curves for competitive pricing and monopolistic pricing. Again, as it's not necessary to have 100% market share to be a monopoly, it's not necessary to have absolutely no alternatives.

You have a very strange mirror.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[_Sharp'r_]

It's a well-known argument that if you decide to define the relevant market small enough, you can come up with a monopoly anywhere. For example, virtually everyone is a monopoly supplier of their specific exact set of skills and life experience.

What's relevant to economic analysis are monopolies in markets people are actually seeking to purchase in, defined by the boundaries of complementary and substitutable goods. The "desktop OS" market is already too limited for that. "Enterprise laptops and desktops" shrinks it even further. Even then, both are still not monopolized by Microsoft, as alternatives exist and are actually purchased by enterprises.

Defining a market as the market for Microsoft products, then saying Microsoft has a monopoly in that market isn't a real monopoly, but that's where you're headed with your constantly shrinking definition of the market for operating systems. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on operating systems, sorry.

In terms of competitive pricing and monopolistic pricing, what you really mean are competitive pricing and profit-maximizing pricing. i.e. the theory is that a monopoly can increase their price until it maximizes profits, rather than having to meet competitor's prices.

The flaw in attempting to argue Microsoft is able to move all the way to a profit-maximizing price is two-fold:
1. Microsoft's PC OS division revenues dropped $4 billion/year (down ~25%) during the windows Vista and 8 debacle from 2010-2015. Obviously their product quality level significantly impacted their ability to sell their product. That trend continued with windows 10, with them being forced to move away from the default mobile tiled/layout and actually cater to the desktop market, more evidence they have to respond to consumer wishes because consumers have alternatives.
2. Microsoft went so far as to give away their new product (Windows 10) as a free upgrade for years. If you think "free" is the profit-maximizing price level rather than closer a competitive price level, well... you're wrong. Is "free" monopoly pricing? If Microsoft could get away with profit maximizing price levels because their customers didn't have alternatives, they'd be pricing a lot higher than they are. Instead, they charge what they can without driving customers to competing products, the definition of a competitive price. They can charge more sometimes because of more perceived customer benefits from running MS Windows over alternatives, not because of a monopoly.

Re:Not good, even if I believe their numbers

[david_thornley]

Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop/laptop market, in the sense that they can charge noncompetitive pricing and can produce whatever they want and people will buy it.

That particular market has shrunk. Lots of people who really didn't want the complication of an actual desktop or laptop went to tablets, which are much easier to use and have sufficient functionality for a large number of use cases. In addition, it's practical to keep older computers in service longer than it was twenty years ago. Microsoft's biggest competition is Microsoft.

Also, Windows 10 was never free. It was a pushed update to people who had paid for 7 and 8 and 8.1. If you bought a new computer with it installed, you paid for it. The free upgrade was to reduce the number of computers running older versions of Windows, and to get more people on W10.

Except it exists.

[Gravis Zero]

"Autonomous Auto-Docking" has already been developed for ICE based trucks: http://www.eaton.com/Eaton/Our...

Hell, I bet the Tesla trucks will come with this feature (easier to implement with an electric motor) and the next iteration won't need a driver.

Why?

[wisnoskij]

Why will AI never be able to handle Urban driving? And if AI will never be able to handle complex and difficult driving conditions, what legislator will ever allow them to drive on highways?

Re:Why?

[vtcodger]

Highways (and, perhaps surprisingly, race tracks) looik to be a much simpler problem for autonomous driving than urban or suburban driving. Basically the rules are:

1. Don't run into anything.

2. Don't take actions that might cause someone/something to run into you..

3. Stay under the speed limit.

4. Don't follow more closely than a safe stopping distance.

5 Signal when changing lanes

6. If you run into a situation you can't handle, pull over as far as you can from the traffic lanes, turn on flashers, and call for help.

There are another two or four or six thousand rules, but with a few tens of thousands of man hours and a LOT of testing, it looks doable.

Re:Why?

[wisnoskij]

They are much simpler until something unexpected happens. How do you completely prevent anything unexpected happening on these highways?

Re:Why?

[JaredOfEuropa]

1. Don't run into anything.
2. Don't take actions that might cause someone/something to run into you..
3. Stay under the speed limit.

Sounds a lot like Robocop's prime directives:
"Serve the public trust"
"Protect the innocent"
"Uphold the law"

"Fewer", not "less"

[ThaumaTechnician]

This and an earlier story confirm Slashdot eschews editors.

Re:"Fewer", not "less"

[twdorris]

Where are my mod points when I need them?

Re:"Fewer", not "less"

[burtosis]

Where are my mod points when I need them?

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

Re:"Fewer", not "less"

[_Sharp'r_]

I'll just note here that the Slashdot editor rewrote the headline and both paragraphs, mostly to insert a lot more quotes from The Atlantic. One sentence of the original submission was kept by BeauHD. So in terms of how the sausage is made, it's not for lack of editorial involvement with the story.

Re:"Fewer", not "less"

[EStrat]

Stannis, and now Davos, agree

Re:"Fewer", not "less"

[mjwx]

This and an earlier story confirm Slashdot eschews editors.

They could be referring to their mass.

Most truck drivers I've seen could stand to lose a few pounds.

Re:Embracing my inner pedant...

[arth1]

"more truck drivers, not less" -> "more truck drivers, not fewer"

They might be talking about volume, not numbers, i.e. that truck drivers will get fatter, not leaner.
This seems plausible if they still have to sit standby in the cabin, but won't have to use a steering wheel and pedals and burn a mild amount of calories that way, but now have both hands free to eat and drink.

As delivery drones already prepare ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... to take up the last mile, we are asked to seriously believe removing jobs from the system will magically create more?

Re:As delivery drones already prepare ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Uber may be trying to game the conversation for numerous reasons... including trying to head off sabotage.

I remember the last US-wide truckers' strike. Trucks were vandalized; trucks were hijacked; scab drivers were injured and (IIRC) at least a couple were killed. Once some large company buys into the long-haul driverless truck concept, the drivers will almost certainly mobilize - and they're not the sort who will limit themselves to protesting peacefully.

I suppose one good thing is it'll finally bring the knowledge that AI is going to completely disrupt the working world into the forefront of the public's collective mind.

Might not be bad

[Roger W Moore]

Uber is, essentially, saying that nearly all of them can all become delivery drivers.

No, actually the article is saying that their jobs will change to involve less driving. As the article points out you need someone onboard the truck to make the occasional minor repair to keep things going. You do not want to have to send a tow truck hundreds of miles into the middle of nowhere for something really minor. The other thing which the article does not mention is security: thieves would probably find an automated truck very easy to stop and loot.

What the article suggests is that truckers jobs will change. Instead of driving the long distances they can just go to sleep in their cab and wake up near the destination for the fiddly driving in a city and the delivery/pickup. This could make things safer by avoiding truckers driving late when tired just to make a delivery on time. They will still need the same driving skills and will still spend time away from families and those are the reasons they get paid a decent wage.

Re:Might not be bad

[sjames]

One of those changes would be getting paid a hell of a lot less. Nobody is going to pay double the cost of a truck just for the privilege of changing the trucker's job while paying him just as much as he makes driving the cheaper truck.

Re:Might not be bad

[drinkypoo]

As the article points out you need someone onboard the truck to make the occasional minor repair to keep things going.

The trucks are changing, and will require less repairs.

The other thing which the article does not mention is security: thieves would probably find an automated truck very easy to stop and loot.

It's just as easy to stop and loot a manned truck. You just point a gun at the driver, and they do whatever you say.

What the article suggests is that truckers jobs will change.

The truth is that trucks are going to change. There's no need for them to be quite so large if they don't have drivers. That won't happen right away, though, because the AV systems will still be expensive for some time.

Re:Might not be bad

[drinkypoo]

Don't be dense. It's obviously a much less serious business to stop an unmanned truck, no weapons required, no chance of it going wrong and someone ending up dead.

What makes you think no weapons will be required? Next-generation AVs are going to be able to switch lanes to dodge obstacles. You're going to have to block off a whole highway to stop an AV, you won't just be able to stand in front of it. That kind of activity is going to be noticeable; the vehicle will call the police immediately.

Re:Might not be bad

[Roger W Moore]

It's just as easy to stop and loot a manned truck. You just point a gun at the driver, and they do whatever you say.

Really? I would have thought that pointing a gun at the driver of a large track heading at 120km/h down a motorway was anything but easy and, since this would presumably involve you driving alongside in a smaller vehicle likely to involve a serious risk of injury to the robber should the driver decide that the best option to to push the smaller vehicle off the road.

Even if the robber is willing to take the physical risk the prison risk is also much greater. Armed robbery is a far more serious offence than burglary and carries the risk of even more serious charges if it were to go wrong and the driver were injured.

More deliveries, because more cost-effective

[raymorris]

You'd have more drivers delivering more stuff to more people, at a lower cost.

Just one company alone, Amazon, has significantly increased the number of shipments in the US, by doing it more cost effectively.

There are a lot more cross-country 18-wheeler drivers than there were cross-country horse-drawn covered wagon drivers. With more drivers, how is the cost of 18-wheeler transportation lower than the cost of horse drawn wagons? Because more truck drivers deliver MORE STUFF, thereby greatly decreasing the cost per item.

Yep, local delivery driving is a lot easier

[rsilvergun]

and easier jobs pay less. Also, Uber & co are hard at work automating that job too, so this rings doubly hollow.

The way you can tell automation is going to screw the working class is easy, look at how whenever the ruling class brings it up they put so much effort into reassuring us.

Closing factories makes more donut shop jobs

[biggaijin]

Everyone who used to work on the assembly line will have nothing to do but sit around eating donuts, so the donut shops will need more employees.

Re:Sending cargo down fixed routes to hubs...

[vtcodger]

"Just use the fucking rail network for it"

Not a stupid idea, but suppose you are a big box store and you need to get a load of ... well ... big boxes ... containing miscellaneous goods to stores in medium sized towns far from your distribution centers. For Example: Plattsburgh, NY; Burlington, VT and Rutland, VT from Albany or Boston. Trucks are by far the easiest way to get that bunch of boxes from a loading dock in an industrial park near Albany to a loading dock at a shopping mall at the destination.

I expect there are legitimate roles both for trains and medium/long haul trucks.

Trains

[ArtemaOne]

So automated trucks traveling between hubs, and trucks delivering from there. Sounds like we have trains already. Why not expand those to avoid putting traffic on the freeway?

Pay depends on the routes you do

[rsilvergun]

team driving still pays well, and even better if you own your own truck. Note that is 'own'. After the 2008 crash truck companies took advantage of drivers to put them into phony "leases" instead of hiring them (think the gig economy crap but worse) with impossible numbers. There's interviews with guys that have .06 cent checks after the fees.

But if you can team drive you can still make upwards to $100k/yr. Mind you, a lot of that money gets spent on the road (living on the road ain't cheap) but you're still doing alright. The ones that get screwed are the short runs (think California to New Mexico). There's a lot of drivers who want those routes because you can drive all week and make it home to the family for the weekend.

Source, close friend of mine was a driver and he gave up because he had trouble doing team runs and couldn't get steady work on short runs.

driverless trucks

[ohgary]

Your going to need last mile drivers, smart trucks are a great way to move freight 24x7 between terminals but terminal to destination in heavy traffic and every changing delivery locations really needs a human.

Re:driverless trucks

[burtosis]

I can't wait for a general purpose android with weak AI. With a true general purpose humanoid robot I'm sure we will hear the same argument that surely there should be at least one human on the assembly floor, or in the kitchens. But eventually the last mile problem in general will be solved. It may not be a good idea to put total control of the technology and infrastructure that took billions of humans to in the hands of a dozen or so people who couldn't possibly have earned or even understood what they were claiming ownership of.

Re:driverless trucks

[Uberbah]

between terminals but terminal to destination in heavy traffic and every changing delivery locations really needs a human

Why - local autonomous systems should be able to figure out local issues. Bridge over 28th street is down to two lanes for construction? Route around it. Driving down 19th street is fine for most of the day - except around 8am and 3:30pm when kids are being dropped off/picked up from the nearby elementary school. etc.

Re:Does anyone trust Uber?

[fluffernutter]

Can you imagine UPS requiring people to come to the truck to get their packages because there is no driver.

I'm pretty sure all companies are already salivating at the chance to do this, and I don't think there is any doubt that the main players will head this way. They may lose some business from deliveries that weren't highly profitable in the first place but in theory this could be such a cost saver that they push out the smaller players that *do* deliver by person.

Not to be too blunt, but...

[Angelwrath]

I'm pretty sure I also saw the Tobacco industry release a self-generated research study indicating that people would get less cancer by smoking, too.

If the source is financially interested in the outcome... don't believe the hype.

I didn't think it was tax policy

[rsilvergun]

that made companies use trucks. It's because rail takes longer and needs more planing. The trend was started by Walmart because it lets them have no warehouses and keep the bare minimum amount of goods on hand instead of tying up cash with inventory. It also lets them keep only what sells on hand, avoiding discount sales and driving up the prices they can charge for what goods they do sell (since they don't have to clearance things that might be equivalents).

That said, we probably could change our tax structure to encourage rail. Also better computer algorithms might make it possible to do Just In Time shipping with rail. I don't know enough about the subject to say.

From the White House press office.....

[bigtiny]

Just kidding, but this sounds about as reputable to me. I'm not going to attempt to dissect this, but the first thing that's glaringly obvious to anyone with any experience in the field that there's a BIG difference between being a long haul trucker and delivering for FedEx.

Snake oil seller confirms sneak oil cures all

[XSportSeeker]

As some might have suspected (duh!), this "study" is bullshit.
No need for verification or whatnot - a study that contains predictions of the future that we have no means to know if it'll happen or not is not a study, it's just speculation.
Uber might envision several ways the industry "could go", but they have no actual way to tell if things will really shift that way.
They cannot stipulate with any degree of certainty how truckers, infrastructure, transportation industry and whatnot would react with an influx of driverless trucks, they cannot really say how it'll work, nor they can guarantee that any of the stuff they are saying will really happen.
It's nothing more than an utopic scenario where driverless trucks fits the overall jigsaw puzzle without too much impact.

I smell bullshit...

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

I wonder if that is related to reading something written by Uber?

Strange how their bare assertion seems so self-serving and convenient. Almost as if it is a steaming pile of bullshit.

Oh, and of course they are going to pretend that all the lost jobs will be made up somewhere nearby. That is until they figure out how to take those over too. Oh, and the argument is completely and obviously fallacious. The current number of short-haul, local truckers is limited by demand for products and materials being delivered locally, NOT by the availability of drivers. All that the former (displaced) long-haul truckers looking for local jobs will do is depress the already low wages of local drivers. Long haul drivers drive long-haul because you get PAID more, not because they enjoy spending weeks on end away from their homes (that they still have to pay for,) and their families.

What I wonder is what the rich assholes being allowed to slowly strangle and destroy our economy, our society, and eventually our civilization, will replace customers with. They are automating everything else... oh! I cannot WAIT until they automate being a rich asshole and throw all the rich assholes out of work.

All Uber did was figure out a way to circumvent laws meant to ensure people riding in taxis got someone who knows how to drive and can be trusted TO drive fare-paying strangers, and that the drivers in question are protected from scabs who will undercut them because they donâ(TM)t have to undergo the same background checks, are able to evade anti-discrimination laws, and oh, that normally would stop companies from ignoring laws requiring them to provide pay and benefits to their employees by pretending theyâ(TM)re not employees when they obviously are, and which by the way, a court of law SAID they are.

The approach of Uber is to fuck all of us, and run away with all the fucking money, so I say in response, fuck Uber.

Iâ(TM)m not against capitalism, properly implemented and practiced... Iâ(TM)m against someone systematically ripping people off and then using all that stolen money to live above the law. Because the whole reason we all follow the law is because it applies equally to everyone. When it STOPS applying equally to everyone, suddenly there is no real reason to follow it anymore, is there. That leaves law-abiding citizens in a position where they feel either like they are chumps for following the law, getting stepped on, kicked, and punched by people who ignore it, or like they may as well ignore the law too, at which point, increasingly NO ONE follows any laws.

The fact that this is happening across the board does not bode well for human civilization, since the authorities only reply is to use technology to crack down further, which is why we now see this slide towards totalitarian behavior in so-called elected leaders, militarization of CIVILIAN police, (who seemingly think, to hear them talk, as if they are somehow NOT civilians anymore which they most certainly ARE...) and increasingly fascist rhetoric... I am not certain about this, but it looks more and more like we are totally fucked. Sorry... what were we talking about again?

What about onboard security jobs?

[Maximalist]

If most long haul freight is moved by driverless trucks programmed not to kill people whose cars break down on the road in front of them, there's gonna be a big resurgence in highwayman type banditry. These driverless trucks are going to need guards to keep people from stopping them and helping themselves to what's inside.

Re:What about onboard security jobs?

[mentil]

Probably not going to work out that way. Autonomous trucks are going to be loaded with cameras low to the ground, which will see the face of any bandits, and the license plate of their getaway vehicle, and be able to send those and the GPS location to authorities/the trucking company. The standard lock on the trailer will be internal and electronic, remotely disengaged by the owner once it arrives at the destination and is ready to be unloaded; breaking through that would require a blowtorch and safe-cracking skills, your average thug isn't going to mess with that to get at a shipment of who-knows-what's-inside. Hiring a security guard for all trucks would cost thousands of times more than an insurance policy for the once-a-decade robbery, and the courtroom payout for when that security guard gets injured/killed by a robber would cost far more than the value of what's inside. Any way you slice it, there won't be human guards for your average Walmart semi.

Trains first, then trucks

[sonamchauhan]

"Long haul routes"? What about trains.

The main issue with trains is the full train, with all its wagons, moves point-to-point. Unhitching specific wagons and sending them off in another direction with a different prime mover is hard. Why not have trains that can couple, decouple bogies automatically? Train propulsion is moving to electric these days. Perhaps, build smaller prime movers into bogies themselves. This could radically speed up rail travel, making it much more effective as well as safer (because units of mass on the network will be smaller, and collision avoidance will have to be built into bogies themselves, perhaps leveraging tech from self-driving cars).

Robot cars are one thing. But will Uber program robot trucks to try and obey Asimov's three laws? If the truck has the option of harmlessly jackknifing onto a shoulder, damaging itself but saving human life, will it? Or will Uber not program such manoeuvres, citing potential jackasses who play chicken with their trucks? Or will they program lifesaving manoeuvres anyway (bless their hearts!), and rely on cameras to bring jackasses to justice? Questions, questions! But I'd rather these be answered first, while rail is fully automated. This is because their trucks will be sharing the road with me, and commercial compulsions will drive road-train type trailers to get larger and larger (another question: how large is large enough?)

Really?

[sentiblue]

I don't care what kind of study they did and how they did it... the phrase "self driving trucks will result in more truck drivers" just sounds STUPID!!! They should just do what their set out to do: transportation and leave the self-driving vehicle business to the grown ups. They started out doing this by stealing ... their new CEO should put an end to a time/money wasting effort and concentrate on core business.

Wrong.

[Qbertino]

Better technology makes more, better jobs for horses."

Fewer

[Threni]

> Uber Study Says Self-Driving Trucks Will Result In More Truck Drivers, Not Fewer

FTFY. It's really not a difficult rule to understand.

Productivity Increase

[Roger W Moore]

Nobody is going to pay double the cost of a truck just for the privilege of changing the trucker's job while paying him just as much as he makes driving the cheaper truck.

They would if he can deliver almost twice as much with the new truck because he doesn't spend 10 hours a day parked at a motel while he sleeps but instead sleeps on the road while the computer drives.

Re:Productivity Increase

[sjames]

Not if they can get away with paying a less qualified person less money. If it's OK to have the driver sleep, it's OK to have a non driver with a cellphone if anything goes wrong that requires a driver with a CDL.

Remember, the employer isn't interested in the employee's livelihood, they want the cheapest option available to them.