Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

It's not gonna work. Who's gonna back the truck in down down LA?

 

"Dallas to Houston "

Let me know when they have 2.5 million miles driving from Houston to St Louis. Or Green Bay to the Twin Cities in December, January and February. Then we can talk about "ready to scale".

 

That's what I'm wondering. Who's gonna get the truck there during an accident? Who's gonna reroute? Who's gonna back in these crazy places? Who's gonna actually CHECK IN at the shipper and receiver? It just didn't make sense but whatever. I'd love to see there AI run through Grand Junction, CO!

 

Not going to be an over night thing, but it’s happening, if I’m not mistaken they are working on Atlanta as well as Oklahoma.

people will keep saying “I t’s not gonna happen” or “let me see them do (insert job here),” but in reality it’s moving forward and will displace a lot of drivers on that I10 and probably I40 corridor.

 

Yeah I heard all that with the same fervor from the “experts” 10 years ago. Back then they all said learn to code or be some sort of artist. You can now ask AI to sling out code and create videos nearly indistinguishable from reality with a prompt. But you still need a butt in the seat to push iron down the road.

You and I both know there’s still more to trucking than pushing that iron down the road. More than a few whiz bang gizmos can do by themselves.

 

I don’t follow the line of thought that since it can’t do 100% of everything a driver may do then it should all be ignored. There are plenty of examples where it doesn’t make sense and there are plenty of examples where it does.

 

Just my unsolicited opinion, the first jobs that will go are terminal to terminal, bye bye 125k buster Brown jobs

 

Well we have this





and this



Now when you say automation isn’t going to do everything you are right. But even if it takes 20% of trucking jobs, it will disrupt the industry as more and more drivers that get displaced will move on to other sectors, further driving down pay.

It’s gonna happen, just when is the question.

door slammers are first in this new era.

 

The concept makes sense. Think of it as intermodal without the choo-choos. Driver gets load from shipper and goes to terminal/launchpad drops trailer in assigned spot. Yard guy drives automated truck to the trailer, hooks/ptis/etc and drives to the outdated staging, flips on the GoGoTruckit switch, gets out and the truck leaves for its end terminal where the process repeats.

The problem is the technology isn't ready for there to be no driver in the truck, and that's the only thing that will make it cost viable.

 

I don't deny it's going to happen, I'm just saying it's not "ready to scale". There's a whole lot more that needs to be done than replicate the parts.

First thing is they need to prove the technology on other roads that have more junctions, and more complex junctions. Show me it getting through rush hour Dallas on the daily without needing driver assistance and I'll warm up to the idea considerably.

Next thing I want to see is how it handles a shut down event on a road without a shoulder big enough to park on. Same category - does it know what to do when the construction guys put their cones in your lane or does it just stop?

Then we move on to snow/ice. I'm talking "I have to stop every hour to deice my mirrors and wiper blades" kind of weather. Are the sensors designed to handle that?

After the tech questions we have an infrastructure problem - where are the launch pads going to be? Who's going to own them?

Finally we have legal questions - who is going to be responsible when the truck is at fault?

In 2017 I said the technology was a decade out. Right now it looks like at least 8 years before it's ready for mass usage. I base that on the number of companies that have stopped trying to develop the technology and infrastructure in the last year. It feels like this rollout is more "we have to show something that looks like progress because our funding is running out" than "it's ready for commercial application "