Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

Ok....I belong to a discussion group on a different site that talks about this subject. First let me say this, I hope to God I wake up tomorrow and find out that my services aren’t needed anymore piloting these trucks. It means I get to retire 2.5 years earlier than planned. At that point, it wouldn’t effect me one bit. Now, here’s some points to ponder about driverless trucks. I’ll start with the news of today.

Boeing has a version of that concept in the sky right now, it crashed over the weekend and killed 150+ passengers, and that’s WITH 2 pilots in the ####pit. (Really?) how about (penispit?) Fast forward to 15 minutes ago, the president just announced the grounding of all Boeing jets with that autonomous system.

Now let’s get to these trucks with the slightest amount of that technology running the highways. All one needs to do is look at the lobbying group called AAA. With all their members, me included, and their clout in Washington, it’ll be tied up and fought every inch of the way, especially down here in Florida with all these financially secure retirees,

Secondly, the amount of money it would take to even remotely get the infrastructure set up makes it unaffordable to these trucking companies that are lucky to net 10 cents in a dollar of revenue. Look at Tesla, I have been toying with the idea of purchasing one, I can afford the car, it’s the retrofitting of my home that puts it out of my reach.

Who will take part in the revamping of the infastructure to get this up and running? Corporate America? No way in hell, the trucking companies? Nope. How about Mr and Mrs Consumer? Nope. This country can’t take care of their roads, bridges or airports without robbing Peter to pay Paul. They will not invest one dime into this type of infrastructure that will be needed to get this out of its infancy. I read a report last year in the WSJ that put a price tag of $3 trillion dollars to do this. For those that say it’s coming, so will more taxes and higher prices for food, toilet paper and everything else we need in our everyday life. I’m good, don’t need these looney tune ideas at my expense.

How’s this idea, fix replace and build new bridges and roads to help trucking continue on, and leave the driving to us. I know, with my somewhat tiny brain, when big money is mentioned for these type of ideas, people tend to say no. The last time the country actually tried this was during the 60’s, it was called the Apollo Program. Yeah we did it, can’t afford it today, for God’s sake, we don’t even have a space program anymore because of cost issues.