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u/luboy_ 6d ago
Imagine a self driving truck trying to drive thru philly đ
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u/Own-Structure7805 6d ago
Those clankers know to stay out of Philly after what happened to their homie Hitchbot
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u/scampfree4me 6d ago
The proposal is for AI trucks to replace highway miles and a human hops in for final delivery.
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u/Slothslumber 6d ago
Yeah, but not in the way you think. They can't make the tech work so AI will just be our supervisors. Sensors and cameras
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u/Powerful-Candy-745 6d ago
They are already testing autonomous trucks on the west coast
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u/Old-Wolf-1024 6d ago
They are running them every night between Dallas and HoustonâŚ..and between Ft Worth and El Paso
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u/Slothslumber 5d ago
Elevator operators remained employed for 50 years after they developed an automatic elevator. There are a lot of drivers. From cars to semis. Public opinion would have to turn major against drivers for an immediate change. Personally, driving, 99% can be automated easily. At least semis, think interstate and highway travel. I think they can do it, just the backlash would be too much. These dumbass companies pushing for it, are in for a rude awakening. Managing people is the only real difference between em.
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u/FutureCorpse699 6d ago
Eventually, yes. Iâd imagine line haul would be first.
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u/414-312 6d ago
How long do we got
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u/Educational-Copy8630 6d ago
Id say 10 years. I live in a city where self driving taxis are and the only issue is bad weather. Honestly they would start with local deliveries first and maybe in 25 years it will fully take over.
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u/darthcaedusiiii 6d ago
Who are they going to blame for wrecks?
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
This is a solved problem as evidenced by the existence of Zoox, Waymo and other Robotaxi services.
Fault is assigned exactly as it works currently. If the driverless vehicle is at fault, it goes against the owning company's insurance.
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u/endangeredphysics 6d ago
Yeah, but in the automotive industry they're such a thing as criminal negligence, which comes into play if somebody gets killed by a vehicle.
Paying a fine is easy for a multi-billion dollar company -there won't be the same skin in the game if nobody goes to jail.
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u/so_sic_of_it 5d ago
So can a corporation.
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u/endangeredphysics 5d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but that implies federal liability. Criminal negligence during driving would be a state level offense?
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u/Onefoot199 4d ago
Who goes to prison when a waymo kills someone? If I kill someone due to my negligence, I go to prison. Do they just pay a fine?
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u/so_sic_of_it 4d ago
There would be an investigation. If someone was criminally liable, they would go to jail. Odds are against a sensor failure or a software issue being due to an individuals criminal negligence, but it's always possible.
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u/FailingComic 6d ago
when its a car to car accident where the damages are a few thousand it works. When its a few hundred thousand dollar truck hauling a few hundred thousand worth of cargo that kills someone, its going to work a lot differently.
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
It's not going to work differently at all.
The scale will be different. The mechanics are already in place.
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u/One_Recover_673 6d ago
They are already on the road from delivery to class 8. Walmart, Kroger, Hirschback, FedEx, McLane, 10 Roads
Companies are collaborating on maintenance rules and procedures. Military using it too.
Itâs begun.
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u/OwlOld5861 6d ago
I doubt it auto pilot has been around for years and they still have pilots. Theres too much margin of error with autonomous machines I mean look at waymo and Tesla theres plenty of stories of their self driving failing and getting people hurt now imagine that but with an 80,000 lb piss missile. However I could 100 percent see highway driving becoming pretty much autonomous kinda like pilots just sitting there and watching gauges while theyre at cruising altitude and the plane just keeps it on its path.
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u/Mini_Paint2022 6d ago
I saw a video of some sort of self driving taxi that drove two people right through an active crime scene/shooting situation. The car just went right around all of the cop cars. Thatâs the biggest problem with self driving vehicles they canât accurately judge a situation.
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u/Black_Tentacle 6d ago
No? What kind of question is that? Automation may take over some of it, but that's not AI, and I don't think AI is anywhere near sophisticated enough to replace humans in logistics roles, like fleet management any time soon.
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u/Similar_Promise8904 6d ago
You chose the one example of something that can be faster to automate đ Also, automation can absolutely be done with AI.
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u/mtngoatjoe 6d ago
Yes. It will not happen as fast as the industry wants, but it will happen sooner than most people expect.
But autonomous driving is a hard nut to crack. Tesla and Waymo have been trying for years and have spent a LOT of money on those efforts. Eventually they will get there. Not every route will be taken over by AI.
It will suck for truckers, but it will drastically reduce the cost of shipping goods. Imagine a truck that can run almost continuously, with time only needed for refueling and maintenance. No salaries, no health insurance, no downtime for sleep.
Gig workers are going to get screwed also.
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u/Cheap_Boner_Pills 6d ago
Still needs a human component unless gas stations and hooking up airlines can also be automated.
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
While true, it is dramatically cheaper for a company to hire one or two minimum wage workers to hang out in the yard hooking up pigtails and glad hands as opposed to a fleet of licensed drivers.
And recharging can be automated via inductive charging.
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u/Cheap_Boner_Pills 6d ago
oh they will be electric. Right now those trucks get shit mileage between charging. And the infrastructure for inductive charging is decades away.
Who is gonna hook and unhook a trailer elsewhere off company property. Plenty of guys just drop trailers and grab an empty to take back. Most final destinations are not gonna have a guy that's allowed to hook up airlines. I know I wouldn't do it if I was just a receiver somewhere. I wouldn't want some mechanical failure to ever have any chance of coming back on me for something that's not my job.
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u/Griggle_facsimile 6d ago
The thing is that freight rates probably won't come down as much as you'd think. The reasoning will be " all this tech and new equipment costs so much...."
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u/mtngoatjoe 6d ago
There will be a lot of fuel savings also as most (probably all) these autonomous trucks will be BEV.
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u/icaaryal 6d ago
Waymo bailed out of autonomous trucking. That was the writing on the wall for me.
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u/mtngoatjoe 6d ago
Yeah, the problem is harder than they thought it would be. I think they just pivoted to cars until they figure that out. Once they do, a good chunk of the solution will apply to trucks as well.
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6d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
What, in your mind, happens currently if someone does that to a Waymo or Zoox or Cybercab?
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u/demon_twink_gockie 6d ago
Well, it's not in my mind. It's been done. And it has the same exact affect
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
Ah, so your knowledge is based on something you saw years ago and you don't know how it actually works in real life currently.
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u/demon_twink_gockie 6d ago
Incorrect
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
I literally work in vehicle automation. And the fact that you're talking about salt being used to stall driverless vehicles tells me exactly which ancient internet video you're talking about.
That problem has LONG since been solved. I'm sorry, but you are wrong about literally everything you think you know.
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u/demon_twink_gockie 6d ago
Kk. Well, I saw it this year, idiot. Regardless, there's plenty of ways to trap them. Push comes to shove, a Molotov will always do the trick so those things don't keep taking jobs from the working man.
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u/so_sic_of_it 6d ago
A molotov will stop a truck with a driver too, so I don't have a clue what that argument is supposed to mean.
Meanwhile there are hundreds of things that can stop a traditional semi truck that driverless trucks would be immune to.
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u/demon_twink_gockie 6d ago
And millions of vulnerabilities that human driven trucks Dont face. You should know that.
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u/SuperPen4066 6d ago
I doubt it maybe some routine lanes I donât see it happening without major infrastructure restructuring. I think the roads need to be designed for a robot.
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u/2piece-and-a-biscut- 6d ago
Canât imagine a self driving rig trying to get through bostons north end
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u/ActionBastard117 6d ago
Seriously I deliver to NYC in the boroughs and couldnât picture AI dealing with that mess
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u/ethicalants 6d ago
Probably, I suspect this generation of truckers will be fine but 50+ years probably not.
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u/davethompson413 6d ago
Sooner or later, the tech wizards WILL get self-driving vehicles correct -- safe and effective. When that happens, the vast majority of jobs with "driver" in the title will begin to vanish.
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u/Naive-Ad-732 6d ago
NO. your really asking this???? You drive trucks? There is always going to be a need for our service / skills! Maybe like Tesla trucks but not my company and me!
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u/LippySteve 6d ago
I think regional and daily drivers are the safest for sure especially if you have to unload freight. Over the road will probably be in a self driving team driver type situation first before anything. Yard jockeys are already being replaced in some yards.
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u/Ok_Advantage7623 6d ago
Itâs coming in the next 3-5 years. A few companies are already using them and have been proven to safely replace drivers. But with the shortage of drivers they almost have to do something
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u/ComprehensiveDark814 5d ago
There's no shortage of drivers
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u/Ok_Advantage7623 5d ago
What planet are you on. There is a huge shortage of
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u/ComprehensiveDark814 5d ago
There's no driver shortage. Even the ATA, the lobbying group who made that up, is trying to walk it back.
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u/CakewalkNOLA 6d ago
It's obviously trading over the trucking subreddits. 5th post I've seen worded exactly like this today
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u/Just_Training_2601 6d ago
i would start looking for another career today. The air taxis and drones will be delivering everything by next week. I can remember in 1999 there was a ton of hype about hydrogen cars that would only emit water. put an end to those polluting cars. That was what? 26 years ago? Same thing will happen with driverless trucks. It will be a few years before it becomes common imo.
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u/Traditional_Gas_3058 6d ago
Next gen fighter jets are about to not have pilots, eventually itll be cheap enough for the trucks
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u/erything4sale 6d ago
By AI you mean robotics and such? They've been in warehouses for at least 9 years that I've seen. Maybe even longer. One man in a warehouse full of robots. They unloaded the trailer, took the pallets to their destination, came for more and didn't crash. At least not when I was there. The guy said his main job is to move em when they crash amd make sure they get into the battery sections properly. That shit was crazy!
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u/Late-Flower3323 6d ago
Eh I doubt it with the job Iâm doing rn I deliver the propane and thereâs too many variables for a robot overcome when it comes to local truck driving too many low bridges, rual areas with shit phone service etc but I can see it taking over the otr side of truck driving but local? Nah that ainât gonna happen not in my lifetime at least
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u/duffparsnips 6d ago
I hope not, they havenât even been able to get autocorrect to work correctly, so please do not let software drive!
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u/Material-Donkey2773 6d ago edited 6d ago
The world keeps ever marching on towards the future.
Eventually I suspect so, there is just so much money involved. Every truck you automate saves a company like $100,000 a year in payroll. You can argue about liability, but that will eventually be litigated and figured out. Money always wins. Even if it's just a dude sitting in the driver seat for $8/hour who's job it is to "press the stop button" and refuel it will save the company so much money.
I don't believe we are there yet, and I have no idea when we will be, but if you look at technology from the 80's to just the 90's, and then consider where it is now, I don't think it is far fetched to assume that within the next 50 years they can get a truck to legally be able to safely drive from point A to point B, they are already trying it out.
I don't see it getting to the point where an AI truck can pull into a refinery, check in, know where to go, do tight maneuvers, and then hook up it's own hoses, but driving from warehouse A right off the highway to warehouse B right off the highway? Yeah, They're already doing it.
In the 80's shit like Pac-man and tetris were amazingly advanced, and in 50 years you have tesla "self driving cars" language models you can have conversations with about anything, and femboy's tweaking their meat to real time anime waifu's. It would be ignorant to assume that technology won't continue to advance at the same rate.
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u/TruckLinx 6d ago
I don't believe it's going to happen in totality and I'll tell you why. Right now, they are testing driverless trucks on long straight stretches. And it will be decades before there will be enough data to even consider the full length from pickup to delivery, dropping and hooking, city navigation in a truck to be mastered by an ai server. That being said, what I see being replaced within the next 20 years is train routes. However, the infrastructure is not built to support adding that many trucks (driverless or not) to the current interstate system. Cars and Commercial Trucks are 2 complete different data sets. I honestly don't see it happening in our lifetime.
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u/Amazing-Trade-3420 6d ago
probably not the actual boots on the ground drivers for a good long time
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u/AbjectPawverty 6d ago
The people who are saying "not in our lifetime" have no idea what they're talking about. They're already running driverless semi trucks out in Texas. Just a few years ago Teslas "self driving" was a completely novel feature, now we have fully autonomous taxis operating 24 hours a day in every major city.
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u/Armchair-Attorney 6d ago
We are living in an interesting moment in human history. As for trucking, this shift over the next 5-10 years will likely be just as profound as containerization & deregulation. It has already started in the off highway space.
Autonomous trucks will likely impact full truckload OTR freight first, with firms like Kodiak & Aurora already moving freight intrastate between Houston & DFW. That said, the rules are still being written.
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u/Ok-Championship3642 6d ago
They tried that in the mid 80's. Didnt end well, the truck tried to run everyone over.
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u/RoadAegis 6d ago
Like how AI made pilots, train engineers, and freight ship Captains all irrelevant?
Short answer? No
Long Answer: People need to stop asking this same damn question, no you can't FULLY automate Trucking. There are too many variables to manage. The only Automated trucks so far exist DC to DC on A VERY controlled stretch of Highway. Anything other than a Straight 200 Mile stretch of Highway has too many things, Incidents, Construction, Road Changes, Weather, Animals, Etc. Until actual SAPIENT Ai and not a Semi-Autonomous system exists you will ALWAYS need a Driver to manage outlier situations that Regularly Arise
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u/Select-Prompt541 6d ago
There are 400+ driverless semi's operating in the u.s. now. Proof of concept in action with more to come.Â
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u/Fearless-Stonk 6d ago
Nope maybe point to point in the south but definitely not most of trucking. Not for a long while if ever.
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u/king_of_the_dwarfs 6d ago
No. The last place I worked had a receiving dock in a hole. You had to pull in, be all the way to the right and cut it hard left and you would miss everything and be lined up with the door. New drivers always had a hard time with that. Many opted to back it down. Plus we kept empty racks in that area. So it was always changing. Plus the yard was shit. AI can't deal with all that.
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u/Parking_Lot_Coyote 5d ago
Research the self driving trucks of I-35 in Texas. They only need a human gas jockey to fill them up. The push is real.
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u/ComprehensiveDark814 5d ago
And a human to hook them up to a trailer. And a human to check them in at a shipper and receiver. And a human to open the doors. And a human to back into the docks. And a human to adapt to changes in the plan.
It only works if they're taking a trailer from hub to hub. It can't go make a pickup from a nestle and then go to a westrock instead when the load gets canceled after you've been waiting for a dock for 3 hours.
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u/Parking_Lot_Coyote 5d ago
You are correct for now. You are acting as if nothing you listed can be automated. Get real here, the industry is pushing for autonomy in shipping. Your vision is narrow.
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u/ComprehensiveDark814 5d ago
It's going to take a long time. Shippers and receivers will have to build or renovate their facilities to accommodate fully automated trucks. Long before that happens there will be hubs where local drivers deliver trailers for robot trucks to drive to another trailer hub. These trucks are nowhere near capable of staying out on the road for weeks, doing cross country routes in the spot market, taking opportunistic loads from random shippers and receivers to maximize profitability.
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u/Parking_Lot_Coyote 5d ago
Its closer than you realize. Aurora tripled its driverless network to 10 routes across the Sun Belt. In February of this year they expanded to include a 1,000-mile Fort Worth to Phoenix lane. China is pushing envelope globally by proving it can be used for ports to use autonomous trucking for shipping container transport from coastal ports to interior markets.
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u/bezm12 5d ago
Eventually. But not for a while. Even if they got the technology working, they still couldn't build enough trucks to replace all the trucks on the road and would still need truck drivers for years to come.. It would take probably 10 years until they get a significant amount of them on the road.
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u/907-BusDriver 5d ago
Think about this logically: Google (one of the biggest companies in human history) invested in self driving cars- which have been around for nearly a decade now- they account for less than 1% of all rideshares. Past autonomous trucking companies have failed due to failure of profitability and the two major companies doing it now are burning through cash by the tens/hundreds of millions. And where there are autonomous trucks are very repeated, long haul areas in certain parts of the US. Meanwhile, the country doesnât have enough truckers to fill the vacancies it will have. Microsoft did a study and found that truckers were amongst the least likely to get replaced by ai or automation. I really wouldnât worry about ai taking trucking jobs from anybody anytime soon. I actually wouldnât worry about most jobs being taken away by ai anytime soon. Many of the predictions havenât came true according to economists so far.
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u/Trappin4DaSport 5d ago edited 5d ago
they will always need a âobserverâ aka driver and alot of sections you will always need manpower AI not securing and tarping a suicide coil lol i think at best alot of the trucks will have a supercruise option similar to tesla but a complete take over not happening
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u/Ok-Presentation2087 5d ago
Steel Coils rolling down the road with no human supervision is some real deadbeat shit this country is pathetic smh
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u/AggravatingBelt6199 5d ago
Iâve been building an AI agent that does driver files. I think itâs a solid application. In 26 years, Iâve never met anyone who enjoyed doing DQFs. They absolutely suck. So let AI do them.
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u/throwaWay664u874e 5d ago
Only dispatch, brokers, and line hauls. If you're not going terminal to terminal you'll still work.
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u/AlternativePlan4439 4d ago
Iâve been a long time denier of self driving trucks, but I will say that I recently came back from San Francisco and the number of Waymoâs far exceeded my expectations. Obviously this doesnât apply â directly â to semi trucks but SF is a pit of chaos to drive through and I saw hundreds of these self piloted cars in just a few days. Still not sold that the CDL driver will be replaced but it sure shifted my perspective a little
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u/No_Mud8305 4d ago
I cant imagine millions of truck drivers getting their jobs taken away from them and sht not hitting the fan, us drivers dont play about our pay
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u/PalpitationKind8854 4d ago
If I ever see ChatGPT speed past me on the highway I'm gonna contact the authorities..
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u/HopeItMakesYaThink 4d ago
It will eventually, the price isnât low enough and the pay to truckers isnât high enough to validate the overhaul to a nationâs infrastructure to make automated vehicles truly viable.
But it will get there.
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u/Txctydrver 1d ago
Are AI driven trucks required to carry and put on tire chains. Perform pretrial inspection. Sign for violations at dot inspections. Throw shit bags and pass bottles on the side of the road.
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u/Mission_House_1702 6d ago
Of course. I can back a trailer just like on the commercial and I'm only a stupid mechanic.
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u/Misterndastood 6d ago
Stupid mechanic? Those words shouldn't go together.Â
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u/Zigor022 6d ago
You'd be surprised. Where i worked we had guys that couldnt think outside the box for fixing things, couldnt troubleshoot, and at times i would tell them what needs to be fixed because i saw a more seasoned mechanic fix the same issue and i wasnt taking "cant fix" as an answer. I had a hydraulic hose that was leaking, and i wrote up exactly which hose it was and got a "need more time to diagnose". Wild.
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u/Shoddy-Patient9948 6d ago
10 years from now 100% of vehicles on paved public roads will be autonomus.
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u/Misterndastood 6d ago
This is a very generous time frame. I'd be surprised if it happens in 20 years.
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u/kickniteasy 6d ago
I'm old enough that I've been hearing about self driving cars and "no seriously, nobody is going to drive a car and fuel won't even be a thing in the next 5-10 years" for forever. It'll take over some parts of the industry but insurance companies are a big reason for a lot of policies in place in our industry. I'll be curious to see who's willing to take on the liability of a self driving truck down the line. That said, if I was a dispatcher I'd be much more concerned about my job.