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Transportation Businesses The Almighty Buck Technology

Self-Driving Cars Could Cost America's Professional Drivers Up To 25,000 Jobs a Month (cnbc.com) 193

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
The full impact of self-driving cars on society is several decades away -- but when it hits, the job losses will be substantial for American truck drivers, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. From a report: When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research. Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today's employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.
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Self-Driving Cars Could Cost America's Professional Drivers Up To 25,000 Jobs a Month More

Self-Driving Cars Could Cost America's Professional Drivers Up To 25,000 Jobs a Month

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  • The salaries are poor as there are lots of others willing to do the job as well. The ones I think took it in the shorts are the ones that bought their own rigs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 )

      On the other hand, if they can retrofit their own rig to be self-driving, wouldn't that turn their rig into a money-maker?

      • I was thinking along the lines of what the government has been saying to the white collar ones, "go Train to be something else."

        • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @05:19PM (#54466325)

          Exactly. Automating trucking (and other transportation) would be a huge boon to our economy, not a drag on it. Suppose for a moment that in one day, every truck was capable of moving itself around automatically, sans person. What do you think will happen to the cost of shipping goods? What will happen to the volume of goods moved? What does that do to the volume produced / consumed? There may be 3,000,000 truckers, but there are 300,000,000 consumers, and everyone of them benefits.

          These stories are very one sided and usually portray the losing side. Just like crying for the buggy whip manufacturers when buggies got petrol-powered engines.

          Food will cost less. More people can therefore afford to eat. This is a good thing.

          • Don't count on anything getting cheaper, lower costs only means higher profits.
            With the current rate of automisation due to robotics and AI we really need to look for another way of life, this 'work for money to be able to live' just isn't sustainable anymore in 1 or 2 decades.
            We are actually already too late and a lot of people will suffer due to our unwillingness to look forward and deal with this problem.

          • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:4, Interesting)

            by BadTuna ( 575923 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @07:42AM (#54469089)

            Horse shit. The average cost of moving freight via truck averages between $1.60 - $2.10 per mile. An excellent driver with ten plus years experience will make maybe .45 per mile. The majority of drivers make less than 35.
              I work in a specialized part of this industry where an average move is $5K. Of that the driver makes around $1K.
              Do the math. ‘Trickle-Down-Economics’ has never worked in the real world. The consumer will never see that cost savings. Marketing bullshit from companies that pretend to care about you, notwithstanding.

          • The benefits:

            1: Fewer crashes, better fuel economy (both due to human factors such as tiredness and time between stops no longer being as critical (driver hours and fatigue both come into it)

            2: It's an industry which has had a hard time recruiting enough drivers for years. It may be that a human stays with the rig for a few years as loadmaster and for final positioning, etc (or joins the rig at a waystation when it enters its destination zone), but that depends on whether a rig is doing haulage or drayage.

            T

          • When you are an experienced cross-country driver, with a 53 foot (25m) trailer or two, I have my doubts that automation can replace the human brain. I do accept that on a clear road, it could supplement the human brain. Because, while the cameras and computers are looking forward, it is also scanning the motor sensors.

            The automated system would have to know that truck A travelling at 105km/hr, is able to pass a truck in the right lane, travelling at 104 km/hr. Or should it. as the highway will be block

          • Just like crying for the buggy whip manufacturers when buggies got petrol-powered engines.

            Yep, came here for the buggy whip comment. It's amazing what a high proportion of employment in the US was apparently based on the buggy whip industry. Truly a lesson for the ages.

      • On the other hand, if they can retrofit their own rig to be self-driving, wouldn't that turn their rig into a money-maker?

        If the rig is self-driving, why would a company hire a person to own the truck that drives itself?

      • How many of them do you think *own* the rigs they drive ? Because it's incredibly few.

        • I don't know, but I was replying to toonces33 who said:

          The salaries are poor as there are lots of others willing to do the job as well. The ones I think took it in the shorts are the ones that bought their own rigs.

    • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @04:27PM (#54465949)

      As someone who used to drive big rigs for my dad back in college, I can say that anyone who thinks an AI will be able to drive a modern tractor-trailer anytime soon has obviously never driven one. A tractor-trailer is about 100 times more difficult, complicated, and dangerous to drive than a regular car. And we don't even have AI's that can reliably drive cars yet. Shit, they've only just recently developed reliable automatic transmissions for those beasts.

      You just show me a AI that can safely and consistently alley-dock a 62-ft trailer down some ancient one-lane road with a turn-in that the trailer can barely even clear, in a city filled with unpredictable traffic and 4-wheel drivers who HATE waiting on tractor-trailers and don't care about traffic laws.

      • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @04:38PM (#54466033)
        I don't think anyone thinks they will dock themselves soon, but it would still be a great money saver if they could park themselves at a hub and wait for a couple jockies to drive a foldable scooter out and bring them in. Eventually docks may be designed to accommodate self driven trucks rather than the other way around. I could see Amazon doing something like that.

        • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @04:48PM (#54466093) Journal

          I could also see Amazon partnering with one of Musk's companies to build hyperloop for freight. It seems like building a 1-meter or even 30-cm freight pipe would be a heck of a lot easier than transporting people. 1-meter could fit almost everything they sell, and 30cm would still be useful for a lot of products. We'd get an operational test of the hyperloop concept. The train people would really sweat bullets over that one; but I'm not sure where they'd acquire the rights-of-way.

          • High speed transport is only used for people, the freight takes the slow boat because cost matters more than speed.

            • Once you have the high speed system, if it's idle it costs money - and the primary cost driver - friction(*) - is mostly removed in hyperloop so the marginal cost of freight should be quite low.

              Lest you think this is just a hyperloop thing, european high speed lines are being opened up for high speed freight (160km/h minimum speed) for the same reasons.

              (*) For high speed trains, the vast majority of friction isn't the nose or undercarriage vs air, or even wheel vs track, it's air-skin friction on the sides,

          • "I could also see Amazon partnering with one of Musk's companies to build hyperloop for freight."

            So can I. The only way to make hyperloop economic is to carry freight on it.

            "It seems like building a 1-meter or even 30-cm freight pipe would be a heck of a lot easier than transporting people. "

            If you have automated podule control then they should be interspersible, but the big costs in freighting revolve around repacking. Rail only became economic "again" after containerisation allowed containerwise shipping

        • I'm honestly surprised they don't dock themselves right now, at least in a secured yard at a large facility. Counter to the above example, there is no unpredictable traffic, and there's plenty of room. The math to calculate a docking maneuver isn't tough, especially at a known, mapped facility, where you can trench guide wire or broadcast local navigation.

          Have the driver drop the trailer off at a gate, and a cabless electric tug picks it up and takes it to storage or a door. The biggest complication is c

          • "I'm honestly surprised they don't dock themselves right now, at least in a secured yard at a large facility"

            There are several types of freighting, but they can be broadly broken into haulage (point to point between depots) and drayage (distribution from depots to local destinations).

            The difficult places mentioned are all typical of drayage operation, not haulage - and drayage tends to be a "clock in at the depot, run deliveries, return to depot, clock out", vs haulage drivers spending days away from home a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pnutjam ( 523990 )
          Yeah, eventually, probably take as long as it took for all those Disney house of the future features to become standard... oh, wait...
      • I have a friend whose family ran several trucking companies, and he's been driving trucks his whole life; currently driving gasoline delivery trucks.
        Do these people really think it's ever going to be a good idea to have 18,000 gallons of gasoline (or any other highly flammable or explosive liquid!) driving down the road with nothing but some half-assed computer operating it? I think not.
        • It depends. People keep telling me computers are far safer because they can process information faster than anyone can. I can't say I believe it is remotely that simple.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
            'Processing information' incorrectly or inadequately hundreds of times faster than a human being can is still incorrectly processed information. The difference here is that instead of just a few people getting injured or killed (in the case of a passenger vehicle), or some sheet metal getting crumpled, dozens or maybe hundreds of people could DIE when 18000 gallons of flammable liquid is spilled all over the place and ignited.

            When it comes right down to it, this whole damned subject is supposed to be abo
            • I hear you. It's almost as if I posted this. The problem is, money tends to justify things.

            • Re:It was a hard way to make a living as it was.. (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Dare nMc ( 468959 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @08:09PM (#54467183)

              > cannot be AT LEAST as flawless and safe as a human vehicle operator, then it has no business operating a vehicle at all.

              Leaves lots of room for computers. Doesn't have to beat the best driver in their best condition, just has to beat the average driver, the sleepy drugged up ones, the vindictive ones...

              Their are many things autonomy beats your average driver at today, and getting that on the road will be a big advantage. That is obviously step one (same as light vehicles today) Get it to save sleepy drivers from leaving their lanes, get it to slow down rigs driven past their safe limits, get it to warn of hazardous drivers and conditions... Then it will be take over the low hanging jobs like clearing railway and shipping terminals. Take over long haul interstate, so one driver can can handle more miles safely. Like oil and coal power, Trucking is likely not sustainable (at least at current levels.) So it does need re worked anyway, so they will figure out what can be automated and what can be optimized, and eliminated that a computer may not be able to handle as well. Since computers can control many more variables more precisely likely that will result in trucks and docks, and containers optimized for those conditions, and removing those hard for automation.

              Autonomy is already controlling bigger rigs with more precision than 90% of truck drivers today can. (3500HP mining trucks going over 50 mph with a million pounds carrying thousands of gallons maintaining 3" precision in backing, also railways, steel mills, ships.) So yes the software and hardware is not complete today for OTR, but 20 years ago most people said internet banking would never happen also.

            • 'Processing information' incorrectly or inadequately hundreds of times faster than a human being can is still incorrectly processed information. The difference here is that instead of just a few people getting injured or killed (in the case of a passenger vehicle), or some sheet metal getting crumpled, dozens or maybe hundreds of people could DIE when 18000 gallons of flammable liquid is spilled all over the place and ignited. When it comes right down to it, this whole damned subject is supposed to be about safety of human beings, and it CANNOT be about anything else. I have said for as long as this whole 'self driving car' subject has been around, that if a 'self driving' vehicle of ANY KIND cannot be AT LEAST as flawless and safe as a human vehicle operator, then it has no business operating a vehicle at all. So far all I'm seeing is this entire technology being rushed to market as fast as they possibly can, and, apparently, to hell with who might get hurt in the process. Apparently, human lives are cheap, compared to the profit to be made from this.

              I completely agree, and most people do too. Even the ones pushing this technology make that a primary theme in many of their pitches. It's a selling point. The problem today is quite the opposite though, humans really aren't that great at driving: "Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44." (asirt.org) AI technology for self dri

      • That is not the kind of place where most trucks dock. Only need to take care of the 80%

      • You just show me a AI that can safely and consistently alley-dock a 62-ft trailer down some ancient one-lane road with a turn-in that the trailer can barely even clear, in a city filled with unpredictable traffic and 4-wheel drivers who HATE waiting on tractor-trailers and don't care about traffic laws.

        Hopefully they'll just ban 62' trailers from city centers and solve that problem the sensible way. Nobody should have to wait on a vehicle which is not suited to the environment just because someone found it convenient to make everyone else wait for them, and cheaper than getting multiple smaller deliveries.

        Nonetheless, parking a trailer is an easy job for a computer. It's easier for the computer than it is for a human, in fact, if its sensors are worth one tenth of one crap, because it will better know whe

      • You naive jackass. The trucks don't have to be safe. They just need to generate enough money to bribe\h\h\h\h donate money to our elected assholes\h\h\h\h\h politicians to keep them on the streets.
        • The transport companies won't BUY automated trucks if the accident cost is higher than the labour cost it replaces. Economics is everything in business.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

        Yes, I think there will certainly still be a longtime need for driver-assist AI trucks.

        Before truckers, the secretary was the most common job in almost all 50 states. Computers and word processors knocked those secretaries off their seat... just a bit.
        http://www.npr.org/sections/mo... [npr.org]

        AI should make trucking more pleasant. But it won't go away completely anytime soon... maybe just on the backhaul "trunk" networks.

      • You just show me a AI that can safely and consistently alley-dock a 62-ft trailer down some ancient one-lane road with a turn-in that the trailer can barely even clear

        I wouldn't use that as an example. The biggest current success story today for automated driving is parallel parking assist, available today in many high-end cars. Many if not most human drivers find parallel parking to be "really hard" compared to ordinary driving, but apparently it's a snap for a computer. Calculating turn radiuses and clearances at a crawling pace should be much easier to automate than identifying road hazards at freeway speeds.

    • And don't forget - if you choose NOT to freeze to death, Jeff Sessions believes that's grounds for firing you !

  • they may as well gum the works up hell if they go (Score:5, Informative)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @03:51PM (#54465639)

    they may as well gum the works up hell if they go jail as at least the will get room and board as trump wants to cut food stamps.

  • trains? (Score:5, Informative)

    by dyeazel ( 609550 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @03:52PM (#54465649)

    We wouldn't need the thousands of self-driving trucks if the rail freight system could compete with trucking, but the deck is stacked against them.

    Rail companies maintain their own "roads" and rights of way. Trucking companies buy trucks, hire drivers as cheap as possible, then turn it all loose on roads built with your tax dollars. One of my Civil Engineering prof's told us that one truck does the damage of 10,000 cars. As a highway engineer, I saw that first-hand. Then trucking companies have the gall to put stickers on the back of the trucks that say, "This truck pays an average of $5,123 dollars per year in over the road taxes." Yet they probably do 50 times that in damage.

    It's time we cut off the trucking company fat cats and charged them to use the interstate roads. That would bring the rail companies up to parity. Trucking companies would just service the last few (or dozen) miles from the rail hub to the source/destination. And we all get lower taxes and less highway construction.

    • Re:trains? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pak9rabid ( 1011935 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @03:58PM (#54465695)

      One of my Civil Engineering prof's told us that one truck does the damage of 10,000 cars

      I second this. In south Texas a recently discovered shale formation (the Eagle Ford Shale formation) created an oil boom. This caused tons of oil-carrying trucks to just completely ruin southern portions of highway 183 to the point where it's damn near unsafe to even go the speed limit anymore.

      • Re:trains? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tjp($)pjT ( 266360 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @05:03PM (#54466213)
        I third this. Some studies of highways built to Interstate Highway standards in the US show cars can't wear out the main road and would take over a century to wear out bridges and other connectors. Trucks are what break roads. And in this amazing fact based world, we subsidize long haul trucking, and we are systematically dismantling over a century of right-of-way building destroying critical infrastructure. Even the military mothballs vehicles just in case... In the Seattle area, by way of example, on the east side of Lake Washington, the right-of-way for rails owned by various regional agencies have systematically, deliberately, and with no thought to the future dismantled the railbed that could be used by the current light rail effort. This will increase the cost of light rail dramatically. (not to mention that light rail is not a good economic fit for the region, they spend billions and more billions of a project doomed to eternal subsidy.) The rail system could also act as a "backup" for the tracks through Seattle to allow for needed reformation there.

        No planning just money grubbing and empire building. Can't very well build an empire if someone else owns the infrastructure!

    • Re:trains? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <hmryobemag>> on Monday May 22, 2017 @05:14PM (#54466285) Journal

      This. It's one of the nasty little secrets of most (or maybe even all?) societies that the public subsidizes the hell out of the trucking industry. Also note that the fossil fuels sold at gas stations get shipped via truck.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      And some stores would locate themselves along rail spurs as they did a century ago so they wouldn't even need a truck, just a forklift.

    • It's time we cut off the trucking company fat cats and charged them to use the interstate roads.

      I can't believe I'm reading this on Slashdot. Only ignoramuses and greedy capitalist pigs are opposed to road neutrality....

  • Just triple your price (Score:4)

    by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @04:15PM (#54465817) Homepage

    Just triple your price and call yourself a "luxury" service.

  • I'm sure a lot of criminals who don't have the gall to assault a regular truck may be able to justify going after a self-driving truck, since there are no people onboard to leave behind as witnesses.

    A driverless truck carrying millions of dollars worth of goods out on a lonely desert road? It'll be like a sitting (well, rolling) duck. They're going to have to have some clever defensive mechanisms installed to prevent an all out field day for thieves.

    • Re:I wonder if there will be a rise in truck robbe (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday May 22, 2017 @05:20PM (#54466337) Homepage

      I'm sure a lot of criminals who don't have the gall to assault a regular truck may be able to justify going after a self-driving truck, since there are no people onboard to leave behind as witnesses.

      Well there's also nobody to intimidate. Nobody with any keys or codes to give you access to or control over the truck. My first thoughts apart from the constant cell phone/GPS tracking to alert police would be to just kill the engine, lock the brakes, give a little light and siren show and if you can't draw anyone's attention and they're really determined to break in by force before the police get there, just set off a few dye packs/stink bombs. Sure it'll ruin the cargo but zero payoff will make the highway robberies stop pretty quick.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

        Easy, just pay a dude to sit in the truck and provide "security". Also to take over if the AI encounters some kind of weather / construction / traffic condition that the computer can't navigate.

        I sort of want to write a sci-fi about the future of mining drones. There's nothing to prevent corporations from using drones to "fight" over mineral-rich asteroids... what's to stop two different companies from sending drones to harvest from the same asteroid? Is it an act of war if one company's drone hijacks (

      • Not if you stop it by hacking into it, and you disable all that you mentioned.
        If people are hacking cars and stealing them, why not trucks.

    • Who says the truck will be alone? It can be accompanied by self-driving armed escort, complete with arial drone cover support (using the other self-driving vehicles like aircraft carriers). And humans may be able to log in remotely to command those defenses as needed. The future possibilities are boundless... in all vectors.

  • Rather than have some guy spend days driving a truckload cross-country, howsabout...

    * short-haul trailer from factory/port to nearest railroad yard
    * have the train take the loaded trailer cross-country to the nearest railyard to final destination
    * short-haul from railroad yard to warehouse or store

  • The purpose of a taxi (or Uber, for that matter), or a delivery truck, is not to provide the driver with employment. The purpose is for the passenger(s) and/or cargo to get there. If that purpose can be achieved without a human driver for less money, than so be it.

    Imagine, for a second, some wonderful pill being invented, that eliminated all disease. Would we seriously consider unemployment of doctors and nurses as a downside to the pill's wide adoption?

    • Eliminating all diseases won't eliminate the need for doctors and nurses. A hockey puck to the face will still be a disaster that needs medical attention. As will getting hit by a self-driving vehicle. Domestic and other violence. Wars. Overdoses. Transplants as knees, hips, etc. wear out. Eliminate all diseases and people who live longer will end up needing even more attention as they get older and become less capable. What are you going to do with grandpa when he's 200 years old and can't die of natural c

      • It would eliminate most of them, and it would be good.

        Human's can't live to be 200, by the way. The limit is less than 125 years.

        • Animals raised in disease-free environments live twice their normal lifespan, so when you posit the elimination of diseases, then a limit of 250 years is reasonable.
      • Robotic doctors and nurses will. And do a better job. Everyone could have a home robot (butler, cook, cleaner, childcare, doctor).

  • Why even talk about autonomous semi-trucks? It's stupid. Really.

    Self-driving semi-trucks would still use-up our paved interstates. They would have loads of only 18 tons each. If they screw up, people get smashed into goo and their families sue.

    The sensible solution is AI for TRAINS, which can haul hundreds of tons at one time. Forget about truck-drivers losing their jobs... it should be train engineers worried about losing their jobs that consist of just standing in the cabin, hitting an "I am at atte

  • Maybe they should join the elevator attendants union.

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