California’s twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together handle about a third of all U.S. cargo. $470 billion in cargo moved through their harbor last year alone. It makes sense therefore that the management is always looking for ways to run more efficiently. Which is why they have announced that starting next year they will begin phasing in driverless trucks to sort and move all of that cargo.
This announcement comes hard on the heels of Freightliner’s unveiling of the first ever autonomous commercial truck licensed to drive on American highways, but these trucks will be very different. They will be guided by magnets embedded in the asphalt of the port and aren’t designed for use on public roads.
“We need to redefine normal,” said a managing director for the Port of Long Beach. “We are concerned when we look at the numbers. When you’re the biggest, you have a target on your back.”
In their effort to “redefine normal,” the port is also implementing remote controlled cranes which will pick the cargo containers off of ships and place them on the waiting vehicles.
Both of these new systems are part of an initiative to keep the ports on the cutting edge of efficiency. According to one executive for Mediterranean Shipping Co. SA, a company which owns 465 ships and leases space at the port of Long Beach, the only way to move more freight than they are right now and retain market share “is with increased efficiency, which is dependent on automation and technology.”
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Source: ttnews
I’ve been hauling containers out of L.A./Long Beach for the past seven months. With the exception of the new LBCT (still under construction as far as I know), all the piers do seem really outdated. A few of them seem extremely outdated, like something out of the 1950s that never got upgraded.
It isn’t just these ports that seem outdated either. A couple weeks ago I flew up to Seattle. The SeaTac airport struck me as being really old and decrepit now (I’m from Seattle). Having to catch a bus to rent a car totally sucks too.
Automation doesn’t scare me. After all they are going to pay replaced workers and pay heavy tax’s for unemployables.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This would make interesting legislation. We wouldn’t tell the fat cats. Just fast trake it into law.
I currently drive and haul containers at the Port in Savannah (Garden City), so how does this effect my driving job when it works it way to the east coast? It doesn’t sound like it will take my regional job (I guess), but it sounds like it will take the guys jobs that work at the ports. I guess driver’s will still go into the ports and get our containers from a machine that doesn’t have a human running it. Time will tell how this works out. More jobs lost due to technology, and few technical jobs gained.
Huh, imagine that, a workforce that continually strikes is getting replaced.
I knew this is where it would begin, but I’m still not worried.
Less Union jobs though, that’s gotta suck for the mob. I guess that’s why they’re in such a hurry to unionize McDonald’s.
Eh,
Those guys will make more in pension and unemployment comp over the next 20 years (as a percentage of what they were paid when working) than I will WITH a job. I think they’ll be fine.