Teamsters must accept reality of selfdriving trucks
This article was originally published on JOC.com, October 26, 2017.
Driverless trucks will take some getting used to, but that does not make them the Halloween demon that the Teamsters make them out to be.
In fact, few industries stand to gain as much from the implementation of driverless vehicle technology as freight and transportation, and specifically trucking: a $767 billion a year business that will benefit from automation by using less fuel and man-hours while hastening deliveries.
The path towards real-world implementation of self-driving technology in trucks is smoother than for cars, as they primarily operate on long straight highways with clear lane markers and signs and have far fewer interactions with pedestrians, bikes, or animals. Yet because of the Teamsters’ lobbying, trucking, at the moment, has been relegated to the back seat of this evolution.
The ultimate adoption of self-driving trucks is not seriously disputed by any of the major stakeholders. In fact, the industry is moving forward with the technology at least as quickly for trucks as for cars. Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), Otto (Uber), Alphabet’s Waymo, and Tesla are at various stages of development in the automated trucking technology. Daimler test drove automated trucks in Nevada in 2015, and Otto made a real-world truck delivery in 2016.
Automated trucks can transport goods more quickly. By way of example, hours-of-service rules require 10 hours off after driving 11 hours, making a trip from New York to Los Angeles take five days with a driver. The same trip can be made in 48 hours with an automated truck. This means goods, such as produce, that previously had to be flown could be trucked, resulting in substantial savings on fuel costs. There is additional fuel savings already demonstrated in real-world platooning trials, where a dozen or so driverless trucks convoy with a human driver in the lead.