Control Your Future

Im only going to take aim at the Autonomous vehicles; will it ever happen? Rest assured it will, any time in the near future, not likely. As someone with a background in testing out new equipment being chosen for military acquisition, and finishing my last semester in a mechanical engineering degree I will begin to point out why thats not a threat to the industry or us as drivers. Look at our predator/reaper drones, some of the most complex pieces of tech that soar through the skies, yet they require human input. Machines are good with yes and no, maybe, if and then etc... however when it comes to other things they're not quite as adept or creative as their meaty counterparts (us). If your rig blows out a tire, and you happen to have a spare you can easily change out the tire and be on your merry way. Robo-trucker9000 lets call him HAL, blows out a tire, sends a distress signal to dispatch, and they send out a contact truck to patch him up. That aside, how often is your GPS correct? More often, than not but with the ever changing status of our roads, never ending urban/suburban spawl, and weather all it takes is one wrong turn to trash HALs Robo-rig. Now hes stuck half under a bridge, holding up traffic, destroyed the cargo, cost the company time, money, and face. Now think about how many robo trucks there would be without us, and how many wrong turns that could be daily.... Now, lets say we've fixed the GPS issue, and everyone on the planet is crowdsourcing live data via their phones and dash cams to update any and all mapping and road condition changes. There will still be drivers for hazmat , a computer will not be trusted with certain things, especially lets say a truck load of high yield explosives for mining operations. On top of that, an entire new industry will be spawned, catering to these new ACV (autonomous cargo vehicles) you'll need more network techs, more cloud service techs, more mechanics, software firms, digital security firms etc... Being an insider in the community, working for and along side the major companies now gets your foot in the door for taking advantage of those new industries arising out of the sector. You, being someone completely immersed in the sector (you literally live in your truck) have an entire demographic at your fingers ripe for the picking, giving you feed back on what they need and what they want out of a service. So yeah, long story robots take our jobs, but not all of them because we've seen the terminator. We lose nothing, we stand to gain faster service, better industry, a better economy, and the creation of countless jobs. Whats the problem?

Even in automated vehicles - there will be a requirement for a human driver to be present for a decade or more.

Wanna pay me 42 cpm to watch movies while the truck drives, then pause for a few minutes to fuel or bump a dock - BRING IT ON!

Rick

Jukebox, Listen to Alex Jones much?

You know, if you find a piece of tin foil and form it into a hat, it will keep the billionaires from reading your thoughts and using them to get your money.

Jukebox, Listen to Alex Jones much?

Tractor man back at it again. I about spit out my drink haha. Just need me a shirt that says "This house doesnt call the police" and an American flag skull cap.

Actually jukebox has a point, but the solution he is offering in unionization doesn't fly. Just ask all the union welders from Ford GM etc. From the1960s. The feds estimate that over 3 million jobs in the driving industry are under threat in the very near future. Unions never saved any job from technology. If it becomes cheaper to replace a human with automation it will be done. Conspiracy theories aside when artificial intelligence becomes a reality jobs are going to fall left and right. Fox news repeatedly says this is expected in about ten years time. Within 20 years time virtually all jobs will be done by machine. The rich however are not going to go quietly into the night and they only make money because we spend it. Basically they are going to have to come up with an entirely new economic model where free money will just have to be printed and alloted to each person so we can spend it on consumer goods. How else will they make money. Jukebox seems to think we're all going to be slaves or something but I assure you nothing hurts an economy like slavery. Free money and a great standard of living sounds good to me. At any rate I am not going to worry about it cause I will either be dead or retired by that time.

Just for the record though true artificial intelligence just won't work with GPS and radar. We are talking about machines that actually think. It is in the future but not the distant future. And remember they don't have to be perfect, just as good as a person but cheaper, and no, Jukebox, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

That's it! I am going to buy stock in Reynolds Wrap.

At least I got one decent reply thanks BillTheSlink. And from the slew of wisecracks and other replies I got I really think you're right. There is nothing to be done about it. Being a Millenial with no hope of retirement I was looking at things in the long run. Quite a few of you want to be replaced by a machine and want fewer trucking jobs or you don't care because you're old and about to retire. Idk who Alex Jones is but I listen to NPR, BBC, CBS & read WSJ. I opened myself up to ridicule by caring about this industry and that's ok. I now see that this industry isn't something I need to care about. Besides flatbed would be one of the last jobs to disappear to Robo Hal the super trucker. All the dry van and reefers will go first :)! Thanks for all the great input old schools and super truckers of the web!

At least I got one decent reply thanks BillTheSlink

Brother, first of all if you want to make change you're going to have to learn not to lash out and make enemies out of anyone that doesn't immediately jump blindly onto your bandwagon. Seriously.

You want to make change in the trucking industry, right? Well you're talking to the right guys. You're talking to guys in their 30's - 60's who have owned and operated corporations, driven trucks for millions of miles, been in steelworkers unions, teachers unions, police officers, IT managers, and about five hundred million other things you don't have one minute of experience with in your life. And you go and spit in our faces and mock us because we didn't just blindly jump on your bandwagon? Do you really think you know more about what this industry needs and what should be done about it than people with two decades of experience in it?

Naive, my friend.

This website gets 300,000 visits every month from almost 250,000 unique visitors and they're all here for one thing - the trucking industry. You had a big pulpit but must not have realized it. And you blew it! You lashed out and burned the bridge to the very people you need on your side to make anything happen.

You're lacking any clear direction or any actionable plan whatsoever. You say you want to "start the conversation" but you really you just want to complain and you want everyone to complain along with you. That's at the opposite end of the spectrum from what needs to be done to enact real change. A bunch of people complaining does nothing.

And by the way, thanks for your "revolutionary thinking" but in reality the trucker's strikes in the 70's partly lead to deregulation in 1980 so this isn't some new, revolutionary conversation you're starting here. You're joining in on a conversation that's been ongoing for 50+ years and has involved millions of people with way, way more life experience and trucking experience than you.

So now that you've spit in our faces, you're outta the club. You had your pulpit and you stepped on your own toes. Live and learn. Better luck next time.

I'm not jumping on either side of this topic as I could support and find fault with both. I would echo one point mentioned already which is that for some time to come, even as these autonomous trucks come on the market, there will be the need for a real driver to be present. I can't imagine that it will be any time soon that they will be finding their way around a building to locate that right dock and avoid or take another route because of obstructions or construction that won't permit normal access.

That being said I would very much support advanced technology such as the radar to help when driving into a fog bank or blowing snow white outs that could alert you to the vehicle that slammed on it's brakes and stopped in the middle of the road in front of you or the accident that just occured because it happened to someone else. Similar to that, technology that when you have been in an accident that your vehicle broadcasts a signal to oncoming traffic and with the radar in the oncoming vehicles, starts taking defensive action if you aren't. I am especially thinking of that video post I saw on T.T. of the snow storm and multi truck pile up that a lady was recording from the opposite interstate lane. That just about made me sick to my stomach watching and listening to those trucks slamming together.

One more piece of technology I wouldn't mind seeing is a back up camera for trailers. Whether hard wired in to new trailers or a portable one you could slap on the back at each stop and via blu tooth or similar, you could see on your phone or dash screen what is happening back there.

My two cents.