On the trucking side of things, I think it'll actually be a positive for the industry in the short term (a decade or two), before the jobs really start to dry up.
Rail freight will probably be impacted by automated trucks sooner than road freight, weirdly enough.
My guess about the industry's progression:
* Automated trucks take over long haul routes (e.g. highway driving) between major distribution hubs, and previous long haul drivers move to middle and last mile routes.
* Shippers begin to shift freight away from trains and towards trucks (because price of trucks goes down, speed of delivery goes up)
* Automated truck centric freeways (or lanes) begin to show up, allowing for higher density and speeds of truck traffic. Price further falls, volume increases. More jobs created in short and medium haul trucking to handle increased volume of things being shipped.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle medium haul (inner city between warehouses), jobs start declining.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle short haul (last mile), truckers are a truly dying breed at this point.
In the interim, I imagine that long haul truckers will be decimated - and short haul trucking (last 20 miles) will flourish. That should soften the blow through the transition period; where AI is good enough to drive straight out of a loading facility, down the highway, and straight into another facility, but not quite good enough to back down an ally in a congested city and get the paperwork stamped by the right person.
I suspect that we'll see regulations that blunt the impact of this. E.g. long haul trucks will be automated, but will require an alert driver behind the wheel.
The trucking industry is huge (say 1.5 million truckers alone, plus rest stops etc), and it will largely have disappeared as a result of this. Uber may want drivers in the cab now, but when it's reliable enough, I imagine it makes sense to just have drop-off points for the last few miles.
In some sense it will be among the biggest economic transformations in recent history. There have been far bigger ones, but I can't think of one that has happened in the short timeframe expected of self-driving trucks. I don't think this point is controversial.
At the same time, I've been very curious to see the overall economic impact, especially with displacing such a huge percentage of the US workforce. Interestingly, there's already a shortage in truckers per wikipedia. I found this fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_Unite...
I imagine that people going into trucking see the writing on the wall. It will put a lot of truckers out of business, but the turnover is already crazy high, with many truckers already leaving the business entirely.
This could be a very interesting case study on how to manage worker displacement effectively. I don't think anyone here is seriously advocating paying more money and lives for goods just to keep trucking jobs up (although more and more on HN one has to write 'defensively' to curb misinterpretation, i.e. I feel compelled to shout that I think this is a good idea). But it would be interesting to see where truckers are getting new jobs already, and whether those industries could use more. Are truckers leaving the industry going back into some other industrial job, back to school, unemployment?
I think there will be a strong demand for truck drivers long after most people would expect.
We’re far from self driving vehicles still, and trucks will be the last to be automated, and once they are, I expect they’ll require human supervision just like you predict.
There are knock-on / 2nd order effects in other industries, as well. E.g. if robotic trucks lower the cost of over-the-road shipping by removing a big cost component (the driver), then it might affect the breakeven point at which rail shipping becomes more desirable than OTR (currently around 500 miles for most types of freight). And if taking the human drivers out lets you run trucks nonstop for longer, overall cargo velocity could increase, which makes various types of just-in-time logistics easier. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
Self driving trucks probably are going to be considered a national security issue going forward. We can't have cargo sitting around waiting for humans in a health crisis. That will indeed be a huge gut punch to that segment of the labor market. The only slightly silver lining is that trucking has very high turnover so the number put out of their jobs will be less than you might think. What will hurt though will be the loss of opportunity to be a truck driver, even if only for a few years.
I agree that it won't happen overnight, but I would guess that with really popular models it will be very cost effective to retrofit the trucks with an automated system.
I think it comes down to what you mean by "soon". I would be surprised if in 10 years a huge number of trucking jobs hadn't already been replaced, and in 20 years they will almost gone outside of a few niches.
Everyone is crying doom and gloom but I see a mostly seamless transition.
The more cargo management responsibilities a driver has the later they will get automated. These are also the most senior and well paid drivers. Truck drivers who will be replaced first are going to be the steering wheel holders that drag a dry van from loading dock to loading dock. These are also the most junior and poorly paid drivers.
As automation takes over we'll have fewer people taking entry level trucking jobs (because the jobs won't exist or the pay will be too low) and the industry will automate the harder jobs as the supply of experienced enough drivers slowly drives up and pushed the cost of a driver for those jobs high enough to be worth automating.
I'm sure some people will lose their jobs but I doubt we'll see millions of unemployed truckers and the value of a CDL tank.
The wide ranging impacts will be huge, as well as the unintended consequences. I actually think the first thing to go will be truck drivers. There are some social obstacles for regular cars, but once automated driving has proven itself it's only a matter of time until the shipping/delivery industry says "wait I can have 24/7 drivers that have less accidents per million miles than the ones that can only do 11 hour days?" Just this one case has crazy implications: 3.5 million jobs lost in a short time span, but you can order from amazon at 6pm and have at it your doorstep before you wake up, all of the trucks can drive at exactly optimal fuel efficiency, all businesses that rely on truckers will likely go under, do you need distribution centers when you have cheap, never sleeping drivers? this will take consume enormous amount of energy... and I'm sure you can think of more just for that one case.
Personally I think the biggest impact this will have is the energy usage one. Currently we stress about our abilities to meet future demands, but we aren't stressed enough to really innovate. Automated driving will definitely change that.
The way I see truck automation going is that the drivers will still be there, but the skill of the job will be dramatically reduced, at least for long haul loads. I'm thinking it will be a lower paying job for drivers that "babysit" automated driving trucks. I don't believe this is optimal. A distracted driver is more dangerous, regardless whether they have a computer helping them drive. But, the incentives are there. I would much rather it looks like the airline industry, where computers have come a long way in assisting pilots, but the job still has stringent requirements of the pilot.
I believe this will be the first iteration of autonomous truck driving.
> Then, truckers could go to work 9-5 and be home for dinner with their families every night.
You seem to indicate this will be good for the drivers, but it won't be. The bad news is you couldn't take all of the current drivers and consolidate them into "last mile" drivers. There will be A LOT more physical work involved since drivers will no longer be sitting and driving 99% of the time. And there will be fewer hours driven by humans, so it will truly be survival of the fittest.
Old and less able-bodied drivers will be forced to retire or switch careers. It will probably be impossible for someone new to get into the industry and to be honest, it would be a poor career move to try to get into the industry at this point. The drivers that remain will continue to fight tooth and nail to block full autonomous driving, but every hour they spend fighting is an hour less that they will be earning money in a career that will eventually be extinct.
It sucks that so many people will lose their livelihoods, but it really is inevitable. And big retail stores will die, too, unless they are automate the whole "last mile" delivery. Loading docks and warehouses will have to adapt or the retailers/shippers will die, too.
I'm not sure if drivers will be completely eradicated, though. The vehicle may still have an operator for non-highway situations, and given there's already a shortage in truck drivers, perhaps the career will slowly ramp down as automation slowly ramps up. I used to think SDC and automation would be fast and furious, but the opposite has occurred so far.
The "shift" as you put it will be very temporary though. It will quite quickly become common place for all commercial vehicles to be self directing once some vehicles are. (Think FedEx, UPS leading this charge)
That said, that "shift" is when it's going to be a really, really shitty time to be a truck driver, as the influx of people competing for fewer and fewer jobs is going to drive prices (wages) down into pits of dark despair.
One important factor to consider is that this won't happen overnight. Once autonomous trucks actually hit the roads, there will be a long period where the drivers will still have to be behind the wheel. And even then, there is a lot of other work a truck driver does other than drive. My father runs a small trucking business, and according to him, the logistics are a way bigger annoyance than the actual driving. You have to time deliveries, you have to unload the cargo without damaging anything, you have to repair the truck (or call a tow / mobile repair) you have to take photos of any potentially damaged products, you have to make sure there are people there to sign off on a successful delivery, you need to find the right people when nobody knows anything about your delivery, etc... The job sounds pretty cut and dry, but in reality, every delivery has some new issue and the driver is usually the one that ends up dealing with it.
I'm not saying that the job won't be automated eventually, but the actual driving is only a part of the job. And even when the automation begins to happen, I think there will be time for them to transition into new roles.
This is one of those jobs that I can totally see being automated, and I really worry about being automated. If we automate the long haul truckers out of a job that is going to be a huge dislocation of workers. Further, what is their alternative job prospects? Even with free retraining do we have enough things for them to do?
I'm really interested in disruptive ideas that can soak up lots and lots of human labor at a living wage.
Rail freight will probably be impacted by automated trucks sooner than road freight, weirdly enough.
My guess about the industry's progression:
* Automated trucks take over long haul routes (e.g. highway driving) between major distribution hubs, and previous long haul drivers move to middle and last mile routes.
* Shippers begin to shift freight away from trains and towards trucks (because price of trucks goes down, speed of delivery goes up)
* Automated truck centric freeways (or lanes) begin to show up, allowing for higher density and speeds of truck traffic. Price further falls, volume increases. More jobs created in short and medium haul trucking to handle increased volume of things being shipped.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle medium haul (inner city between warehouses), jobs start declining.
* Automated trucks begin to be able to handle short haul (last mile), truckers are a truly dying breed at this point.
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