This post appeared in the November 2016 issue of Truck News
“Robots Could Replace 1.7 Million Truckers in the Next
Decade”. That is a headline from the LA Times on September 25th of
this year. The article stated that trucking will likely be the first type of
driving to be fully automated because long-haul trucks spend most of their time
on highways, which are the easiest roads to navigate without human
intervention.
As drivers we have heard it all before. It is all just talk
isn’t it? Or is it?
Earlier this year I listened to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), speaking to the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C. The topic was
5G wireless networks and making expansion of 5G a national priority in order to
compete in our increasingly interconnected world. 5G is fiber fast without the
cable connection. Think of a surgeon in a virtual reality setting performing
surgery on a patient on the other side of the globe in real time. Response
times on this network are only 1 millisecond, or 1/1000 of a second. Wheeler
outlined how this wirelessly connected powerful processing network, centralized
in the cloud, is fully capable of controlling autonomous vehicles, energy
grids, utilities, etc.
Wheeler also stated that we have always underestimated the
innovation that results from new generation networks, citing the example of the
first wireless voice networks (Web 1.0) that were estimated to end up with
100,000 users in the U.S. by the year 2000 and the actual number ended up to be
over 100 million.
But it’s all still just talk right? If it is you have to ask
yourself why 45% of the jobs in the workforce are now automated according to
Andy Stern, author of “Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can
renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream”. Stern brings together a host
of business experts and futurists that support his position that a massive
disruption in the economy is pending as a result of automation and it is not
being adequately addressed. A tsunami of job losses on the horizon is how Stern
describes the near future.
Think of what you have seen in just the past few months even
if you follow news in the trucking industry half-halfheartedly. Uber partnered with
Ford to start providing driver-less cars to customers in Philadelphia to test
their driver-less systems. This starts to normalize the public acceptance of
autonomous vehicles. Volvo has fully operational autonomous vehicles in
European mining operations. Truck News reported last month on the platooning
technology that is being put into use in Europe and in September of this year
Michigan State Senate approved a law allowing trucks to drive autonomously in
“platoons”. Several other states have this legislation in place also.
Those examples are but a small taste of how automation,
which has been met with scorn in many driver circles, is on the brink of
exponential growth. So the claim of replacing 1.7 million drivers in the next
decade is not a pipe dream. It’s a reality we need to face as professional
drivers, or at least the 50% of us that won’t be retired by 2025. Do not forget
that driver wages represent approximately one third of the costs companies pay
to move freight down the road. Reducing that cost is one of the primary goals
of business. Drivers need to stop thinking that there are only two options on
the table, those being a fully automated world with no drivers or the world as
it is with a driver in every vehicle. The simple answer is we don’t know
exactly how things will play out but the fact that fewer human beings will be
required to move freight down the road in the near future is obvious.
Absent from this is how the trucking industry is going to
act as millions of middle income jobs come under threat. As a driver you should
be thinking deeply about this and developing a contingency plan of your own.
No comments:
Post a Comment