Robots will take on the most tedious, most dangerous job first, in most cases. Trucking is no exception.
Autonomous driver engineers are fully focused on long-haul trucking, interstate routes are almost seamless except for a slow turn or E-ZPass lane. Thus, these routes are among the easiest tasks in the autonomous vehicle spectrum.
The biggest hurdle might be infrastructure. The short trip from a factory or distribution center to an interstate is usually much harder than the next few hundred miles. The same thing happens when a car exits an interstate highway. One solution is for trucking companies to set up transfer stations at both ends, where human drivers handle the difficult first leg of the trip, then hitch their load to robotic rigs for the tedious middle part. Another station at the exit was tossing the cargo back to the analog truck for delivery.
Such a system, according to a new study from the University of Michigan, could replace about 90% of the people who manage long-distance trucking in the US, equivalent to about 500,000 jobs.
“When we talked to truck drivers, literally every one of them said, ‘Yes, this part of the job can be automated,'” explained Anirud Mohan, Ph.D. in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of the study. study. “We thought they would be a little more questionable.”
However, there are some big “ifs”. First, autonomous systems will have to figure out how to navigate in bad weather, much better than now. Second, regulators in many states still haven’t cleared the way for robotic drilling rigs. Finally, you need to take into account the infrastructure – all transfer stations where the cargo will pass from the caffeine-powered analogue to the algorithms.
However, if trucking companies focused only on America’s Sunbelt, they could offset 10% of human driving quite easily, the study shows. If they deployed robots across the country, but only during the warm season, half the hours of trucking across the country could work autonomously.
“This is already happening, but on a fairly limited scale,” said Part Vaishnav, an associate professor at the University of Michigan in climate and energy and co-author of the study. There are about 3.3 million truck drivers in America, although many of them do not stay in the profession for long. Long-distance jobs, in particular, are some of the worst. Not only are they long and tedious, but they are also one of the lowest paid gigs. Truck drivers are on the road about 300 days a year and earn about $47,000; short routes can be more difficult and as such pay better and attract more experienced drivers.
No wonder long haul workers are completely replaced every 12 months or so. The industry is currently short of about 61,000 drivers, according to the American Trucking Association. “In our imagination, we see that these are middle-class jobs,” Vaishnav said, “but that hasn’t been the case for a long time.”
The shortage of drivers is so great that US trucking companies are trying to import drivers to alleviate what has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in the supply chain crisis. Truck lobbyists are also seeking to lower the minimum age for interstate drivers from 21 to 18. So when it comes to piloting an 80,000-pound car moving at 75 miles per hour, the choice may be between a robot or a teenager.
Several startups are betting on robots, including TuSimple, a San Diego, California-based company that claims its autonomous driving systems reduce fuel consumption by as much as 10%. In December, the company removed its escorts from an 80-mile stretch of road between Phoenix and Tucson. (By the end of next year, the company plans to begin deliveries to large areas of the country without drivers.
“We’re getting to a real level of commercial viability,” said TuSimple CFO Pat Dillon, “which I think is pretty exciting.”