
Uber Self-Driving Truck Packed with Budweiser Makes First Delivery in Colorado - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-25/uber-self-driving-truck-packed-with-budweiser-makes-first-delivery-in-colorado
======
ChrisBland
Interesting question to pose for people here: In 2015 38,300 people were
killed on U.S. roads, and 4.4 million were seriously injured - if automation
saves those lives, but puts others out of work, is that not what we want?
Shouldn't we prioritize life over employment?

~~~
feld
You solve it by re-training these people for other jobs (free education) and a
minimum living wage.

~~~
CPLX
Retraining has been this sort of ludicrous dogma for awhile, especially since
the 90's when the Clinton administration seemed to be obsessed with it. I keep
thinking this year will be the year this fiction finally dies.

The solution involves real jobs with living wages, not sending former factory
workers to sit in de facto community college seminars three nights a week for
free.

~~~
norea-armozel
I know I'm going to be the jerk here so I'll say maybe we don't need jobs?
Maybe we need a better distribution of the wealth created? I know folks don't
want to touch that idea with a 10 foot pole but it's a legitimate question.
I'm not saying we need state socialism but maybe we do need some kind of
socialism to handle these permanent changes to the economy because automation
isn't going to stop just at blue collar skilled jobs. You got legal staff,
financial advisors, and many more kinds of work that's on the chopping block
once the automation schema is figured out for them (plus/minus time for
insurance companies to figure out liabilities). Just shifting us into another
bullshit job like marketing or legal isn't going to fix the underlying problem
in that work is seen as an end in itself rather than a means to an end (to
feed/cloth ourselves). Once we remove the myth that we need to work to live
(work in the sense of working in a cubicle or around a table in an office 8-5
and commute to/from said office five times a week) then we can talk about what
we should do next.

~~~
CPLX
There's really no reason we can't have an advanced society with reasonably
compensated skilled manufacturing jobs. The Germans and the Swiss have
demonstrated as much, for example.

Once you take it as fact that it's "impossible" for workers to have rights and
a proper social contract in the modern global economy you start acting
accordingly and become blind to the fact that it's not inevitable at all. It's
important to recognize that our policies towards the working class in this
country are deliberate political choices borne of the way power and influence
works in our political system, not laws of nature.

~~~
norea-armozel
I think you're missing my point which is that no one should have to have a job
to work or to live. Work isn't just 8-5 cubicle or factory setting nonsense.
Cleaning your laundry is work. Cooking is work. Telling a story is work.
Carving wooden figurines is work. But they don't have to be jobs. They don't
have to follow an 8-5 schedule. And most importantly, the benefits of that
work doesn't have to be majoratively sold at a discount to capitalists. To
have housing, food, or medical care shouldn't come with the condition of
repetitive drudgery. If a machine can do the drudgery then get the human out
of it as soon as possible. This isn't entirely utopian either considering many
kinds of work in textiles and plastics have been automated away. The same goes
for building electronics to a point where all most people are tasked with is
QA or packing (hell, I've seen machines replace people in packing and
warehouse work). What has to change is our legal and social dynamics around
who owns the wealth of production. Once we socialize the capital we can
discuss whether or not we should have drudgery for it's own sake.

------
nateberkopec
The destruction of the longshoreman/dockworker career happened over the course
of about 10-15 years during the 60's and early 70's. Containerization
basically made their jobs unnecessary. That industry was far more unionized
than truck drivers in the US are today.

To be honest, I don't think, as a society, we should be sad to see the truck
driver go. It's a tough job with an awful lifestyle, and a work environment
that's basically impossible for women and people of color.

What we should be concerned about is what all these people will do next - most
won't have any other (labor) skills. Many of the longshoremen got "golden
parachute" type payments to retire early, thanks to the negotiating power of
the union. Most truck drivers, I think, will not be so lucky.

~~~
kirykl
>a work environment that's basically impossible for women and people of color

how so ?

~~~
jenkstom
I work for a trucking company. There is plenty of diversity. Drivers mostly
operate solo, it doesn't really matter what you look like or what sex you are.

------
sverige
So in the future, what happens when no one owns a car and we're all dependent
on summoning a self-driving car to get any real distance from home?

Will we have internet arguments about the rights of people to go where they
like?

Will the arguments become as fine-grained as "Well, yes, if you want to go to
the rally to protest the cuts in UBI, you really should expect that Uber will
send one, but it's very difficult and expensive to build out the system for
such peak demand events. And ultimately, that just cuts into the funds
available for UBI. Why not just register your complaint on the website at
[https://myvote.ubifunding.gov](https://myvote.ubifunding.gov)? Or you can
just click the button on facebook."

Followed by blog posts about what a "Sunday drive" was and comments
reminiscing how readers used to take drives just to explore and lamenting that
this is no longer practical.

I'm all against surrendering autonomy to machines and the corporations who own
them.

~~~
usrusr
From the car-free point of view, you already surrendered autonomy when you
scaled your regular transport needs to the point where they can't be easily
fulfilled by walking.

~~~
jessaustin
...and cycling!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Which can satisfy almost the same trip distances as cars, most days.

------
tedchs
Glad they tested this with practice beer; wait for actual beer delivery after
GA.

~~~
cmarschner
If it had been spilled - no damage!

------
kriro
Especially in the US even a fairly simple "hybrid" self driving truck could
probably provide some savings. Automate the long straight roads and let the
driver take over for everything else. Depending on the route the sleep
schedules could be met during the automated driving part. I guess that's what
they meant with the sentence about saving 50kk/year even in the current form.

As an aside, the article mentioned that the driver was sleeping in the
back...I'm sure that's no accident. However I doubt that's a safe thing to try
(and only possible in these very artificial circumstances) even with a good
warning/wakeup system in place it takes too long to get from the back to the
front and react.

~~~
jenkstom
With the hours of service reform passed a few years ago, drivers are required
to have so many off-duty hours and so many sleep hours per week and day. Being
able to go off-duty or log sleep while the truck is traveling means higher
fleet velocity, which means higher fleet utilization, which means higher
revenue.

A truck with a single driver has to sit idle (or off in California) a large
part of the day. Capital costs don't take a break during those hours.

------
puranjay
I can't WAIT for driving to become obsolete.

Just think about how retarded our entire thinking on transportation has been.

We first tamed a massive, powerful animal, placed a piece of leather on its
back, and prayed that it didn't get too moody and threw us off.

Now we strap ourselves into a piece of metal which 99.99% of us can't even
begin to understand, then barrel down roads at 80mph while praying that the
guy in the other lane isn't drunk/sleepy/high

~~~
ourmandave
Now we strap ourselves into a piece of metal _controlled by an AI_ which
99.99% of us can't even begin to understand, then barrel down roads at 80mph
while praying that the AI in the other lane isn't _hacked /faulty/Tesla v0.1a_

~~~
zimbatm
Or that a OTA software upgrade transforms the highway into a destruction derby
playground.

------
dboreham
Hmm: "Otto spent two weeks carefully mapping the road to make sure the
technology could handle it."

~~~
60654
Yeah. And police escort to get other drivers out of the way. Also: plain
highway in good weather.

This was a great publicity stunt, but there's a huge difficulty cliff between
toy problems and actual driving in traffic in real-life conditions.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Early auto laws required somebody with a flag and horn to walk ahead of the
car to warn horse riders they were coming. Doesn't mean the car couldn't
operate autonomously anyway. These unnecessary obstacles will go away once
folks become more comfortable with auto drivers.

------
HammadB
Well that didn't take long at all since Uber acquired Otto not too long ago.
It's interesting to note how many precautions they took including a police
escort, careful mapping, light traffic, and weather.

------
losteverything
Truckers and delivery workers are a club so to speak. Usps waves to UPS
drivers. Teamsters are safe and polite driving - wise to other big rigs

Do not underestimate the disrupted's ability to disrupt the disrupter. I can
so see where driver delivery drivers block driver less vehicles. And
disrupters can become quite cleaver

~~~
undersuit
>I can so see where driver delivery drivers block driver less vehicles.

Can't stop stupid. Delivery drivers taking time out of their schedule to mess
with a computer... that isn't paid by the hour. Sure, be vindictive. You'll
feel real good for the next 5 minutes.

~~~
losteverything
Not the one off delivery but organized at a port or railyard or highway egress
or access point

~~~
snrplfth
Then they're either immediately in violation of trespassing laws or
"obstruction of traffic" laws.

------
noer
I know very little about the technology in self driving vehicles, but why was
the driver/monitor of this truck allowed to sit in the sleeper compartment and
not in the drivers seat like the uber self driving cars in pittsburgh?

~~~
Fricken
He was travelling with a police escort and support crew. And highway driving
is much simpler than downtown Pittsburgh.

------
patcon
Man, if we think this self-driving car thing is jarring, I wonder how we'll
adjust to the incoming teachable general purpose biped robots...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY)

Basically, however fast we think self-driving cars are happening and requiring
adjustment, that shift is like we're still on training wheels, compared to the
real game-changer. We'd better figure out how to take care of those truckers
and taxi-drivers, or it doesn't bode well for our adaptability as a society.

------
dgudkov
It seems odd to me that a heavy driver-less truck is tested on a regular
expressway with regular cars which drivers have no clue that they're actually
participating in a rather dangerous test that may potentially lead to fatal
casualties. It's like testing a pilot-less plane with real passengers which
are not informed that their plane has no pilots. I'm glad everything went
smoothly in this case, but shouldn't such testing be done in a more protected
way until the technology becomes proven?

------
jenkstom
Last week I sat through a presentation by the American Trucking Association.
The presenter said there won't be truly autonomous vehicles (with no driver at
all) for 20 years. He pointed out that airplanes have been able to take off,
fly and land without human intervention for a long time, and there are still
pilots in the seat. But then most trucks don't carry passengers.

In the current environment, any wreck involving a truck costs at least a
million dollars. A drunk driver that runs into a truck? The family will sue
and win lots of money, because that's how it works.

The real test of autonomous will be in how liability is dealt with. A fully
autonomous truck will be the responsibility of the company that supplies the
software, not the carrier.

Moving liability away from the carrier will open up some interesting
possibilities. It would become less costly to own and operate trucks, so I
suppose smaller businesses would be able to compete more easily. It also means
that carriers will become commoditized, long haul carriers at first then
eventually the short haul carriers.

In 30 years a carrier will be little more than an API that accepts a load,
orders a truck to drive somewhere then sends an electronic bill. There's
little incentive at that point for manufacturers to even sell trucks - why not
just operate them too? The real money will be in maintenance and fuel.

~~~
maxerickson
_The real test of autonomous will be in how liability is dealt with. A fully
autonomous truck will be the responsibility of the company that supplies the
software, not the carrier._

Why do you think this is clearly the case? If the licensing is thorough, it
probably continues to make sense to finance the liability by charging the
entity that controls how the vehicle is used (a truck operating in a rural
setting will probably be involved in less incidents than one operating between
Boston and NYC).

------
nissimk
Are there going to be any jobs left? It seems like there are a lot of jobs
that involve driving. This technology has the potential to displace a very
large number of workers.

~~~
ChrisBland
Lots of people were put out of work when the loom was invented. We've gone
through this before many times in human history

~~~
treehau5_
Putting aside what s ridiculous, downright asinine comparison that was in
comparison with our economy now -- what an extremely cold, unempathetic
comment. People, lots of people, with families are going to lose their
livelihood. Many are advanced in age, and have only known one thing their
whole life. We have a responsibility to our fellow neighbor. A 50 year old
truck driver is not going to pick up a coding boot camp and get hired as a
tech worker, maybe a small handful but it's unrealistic.

~~~
dotancohen

      > Putting aside what s ridiculous, downright asinine
      > comparison that was in comparison with our economy now
      > what an extremely  cold, unempathetic comment.
    

You should read about the introduction of machines in 18th century England if
you think that comparison is ridiculous, asinine or unsympathetic. Start with
the Flying Shuttle and the Spinning Jenny.

Hint: there was no social security or unemployment benefits then.

~~~
wastedhours
As has been mentioned elsewhere - there were other un/low skilled industries
that people could move sideways into once they'd been displaced. Automation
affected vertical industries in previous "revolutions", whereas now automation
is impacting a vast swathe of un/low skilled industries simultaneously.

------
patrickdavey
The amount of "disruption" the coming automation is going to cause is
staggering I think.

If you haven't seen it, I highly highly recommend watching this video[0] -
"Madam Sandi tells your future" (by Sandi Metz) It's all about change, and how
when the step changes come, and they will, you need to be ready to adapt.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOM5_V5jLAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOM5_V5jLAs)

------
ourmandave
I don't know what my reaction will be to a fully autonomous self-driving truck
at a 4-way stop when we arrive at the same time. You have to decide who goes
next.

I usually wave the other guy through if they appear to be in a hurry. Now,
there is no other guy. Will the truck sit there and ignore me waving? And
finally do the start-stop dance when I try to go?

(Or roll it's headlight eyes and mutter "humans..." when I do a rolling stop
and flip it off?)

~~~
delecti
Well the laws for a 4-way stop aren't ambiguous. The autonomous vehicles will
know the laws and try to follow them until one of us dumb meat-bags tries to
go out of turn. Arriving at the _exact same time_ is comparatively rare, and
the computer will know who arrived first.

~~~
mattmcknight
Even when arriving at the same time, yield to the vehicle to your the right.
(in the US) If you are across from each other and one vehicle is turning, the
turning vehicle yields. Not even that much code to write...

------
dangraziano
Closest I've been to an autonomous drive is the brother in law's s60 Volvo.
Car pulls back over the slightest dip in the road, kinda freaky how it will
detect human-like movement and come to a halt.

Oh, and future, you scare me - [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvm-
yDrWIAAottR.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvm-yDrWIAAottR.jpg:large)

~~~
user5994461
Good point! Let's remove the pilot cabin. Save space and weight.

------
kevinalexbrown
The trucking industry is huge (say 1.5 million truckers alone, plus rest stops
etc), and it will largely have disappeared as a result of this. Uber may want
drivers in the cab now, but when it's reliable enough, I imagine it makes
sense to just have drop-off points for the last few miles.

In some sense it will be among the biggest economic transformations in recent
history. There have been far bigger ones, but I can't think of one that has
happened in the short timeframe expected of self-driving trucks. I don't think
this point is controversial.

At the same time, I've been very curious to see the overall economic impact,
especially with displacing such a huge percentage of the US workforce.
Interestingly, there's already a shortage in truckers per wikipedia. I found
this fascinating:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_United_States#Truck_drivers)

I imagine that people going into trucking see the writing on the wall. It will
put a lot of truckers out of business, but the turnover is already crazy high,
with many truckers already leaving the business entirely.

This could be a very interesting case study on how to manage worker
displacement effectively. I don't think anyone here is seriously advocating
paying more money and lives for goods just to keep trucking jobs up (although
more and more on HN one has to write 'defensively' to curb misinterpretation,
i.e. I feel compelled to shout that I think this is a good idea). But it would
be interesting to see where truckers are getting new jobs already, and whether
those industries could use more. Are truckers leaving the industry going back
into some other industrial job, back to school, unemployment?

~~~
massysett
If truck driving is already a high turnover job, there won't be displacement
of a nature that gets political attention. Firms just won't hire new truckers
to replace the ones that leave. Trucking will be in transition a long time.
The first self driving trucks will be fully attended. Then maybe they are
unattended, but only on highways. Self driving in the city is likely years
away.

This wouldn't be like shutting a factory or mine where people have worked for
years and where they hoped to retire from. By the same token, you see self
checkout machines everywhere, parking garages without manned booths, automatic
toll roads, self-serve kiosks at restaurants, and self-serve gas with pay at
the pump. No one ever paid any attention to displacement from those jobs
because they are high turnover anyway.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
What if, say, the trucking industry loses 50% of its jobs/salary in 5 years?
That's a lot of displacement even in an industry with high turnover (I don't
know if those numbers are realistic, but I do think there will be faster and
more massive displacement than self-serve checkout and automatic toll roads).

What I'm curious about is whether whatever industries truckers are heading to
now can accommodate that many more workers without problems. Just because
there's a high turnover doesn't necessarily mean that wherever truckers are
heading now could handle 10x the influx of employees without funny
consequences.

------
losteverything
How did it get unloaded?

How did the returns (kegs etc) get back into the truck and spoils too?

Who unloaded back at the distributor?

~~~
sverige
Apparently there was a driver present. Humans augment the machine, until the
robots get good enough to do that part of it.

~~~
losteverything
The owner or the liquor store I worked at required the drivers to do a lot.
Heavy lifting and placing product. They are defacto employees. Owner of a
liquor chain has great pull. From simple product placement, sales, etc.

Uber chose this market - but why a heavy perishable delivery.

~~~
johnm1019
> The owner or the liquor store I worked at required the drivers to do a lot.
> Heavy lifting and placing product. They are defacto employees. Owner of a
> liquor chain has great pull. From simple product placement, sales, etc. Uber
> chose this market - but why a heavy perishable delivery.

You nailed it yourself. It's heavy, so hard for people to move (easier for
machines). It's perishable, so it benefits greatly from more frequent smaller
deliveries, instead of rare large deliveries. If you don't have to pay a
person to drive, you can do that. Additionally, the packaging is perfectly
regular (cans or kegs, always the same size, made of a durable material).

------
gambiting
"Otto spent two weeks carefully mapping the road to make sure the technology
could handle it."

So...if new roadworks appeared anywhere on that 120 mile stretch of road that
morning, the truck would not be able to deal with it I assume?

~~~
Ensorceled
Not necessarily. Everybody in this business is being careful and super
paranoid about accidents causing massive PR and Regulatory set backs.

------
delegate
> AB InBev said it could save $50 million a year in the U.S. if the beverage
> giant could deploy autonomous trucks across its distribution network.

Sweet words for AB InBev shareholders, not so sweet for the obsoleted truckers
though.

Obviously this technology is inevitable, but I think that the authors of such
technologies should also come up with political proposals on what to do with
the displaced people.

Politicians should start acting _now_ and figure out how to respond to these
changes. And that should be done on a global scale, because technology is very
fast to spread across borders.

~~~
grecy
> _I think that the authors of such technologies should also come up with
> political proposals on what to do with the displaced people._

Did the inventors of automobiles have to deal with all the farriers and people
who tend to horses?

...or when milkmen were obsolete?

...or when switchboard operators were obsolete?

...or when telegram operators were obsolete?

(I could go on all week)

History is _full_ of instances where certain job roles are no longer needed
and are obsoleted. This is a good thing, it means we're moving forward and
progressing.

I wish everyone wasn't so afraid of jobs, but that's the consequence of being
up to your eyeballs in debt.

~~~
riskable
You're not even close to a realistic comparison. As a percentage of jobs
overall, people working with horses, milkmen, switchboard operators, etc
didn't amount to the sheer enormity of the jobs that will be obsoleted or
displaced by self driving vehicles.

There is no comparison in history to make. Nothing has happened like this
before. Never.

The closest you could get would be something like the aftermath of WW2 in
Europe or maybe some devastating plagues but even _that_ isn't a good
comparison because those removed the people _entirely_ ; dead people don't
need to be fed or swayed from starting a violent revolution.

It's not just the truckers or cab/bus drivers. It's all the industries that
support them. Those will disappear too.

Just think of all the truck stops we have in the US and the amount of money
that truckers spend at these places to sleep, take showers, get wifi, etc.
Those will go away too.

The motels where travelers sleep at midway points in their travels will lose
all that business. The auto body shops that rely on people making mistakes
while driving will lose all that business too.

You're vastly underestimating the disruption if you're bringing up switchboard
operators and milkmen.

~~~
grecy
This attitude continues to boggle my mind.

It's as if you think it would be better for millions of people to spend
massive amounts of their lives away from their families, living extremely
unhealthy sedentary lifestyles, eating truck stop and gas station "food" and
operating massive machines that cause many deaths every day of the year.

You actually think it's a good thing that millions of people spend their time
this way!

We have the ability to make the world _better_. We have the ability to
eliminate the need for thinking, feeling, living humans to whittle away their
lives sitting in trucks and being away from their families.

Yes, technology is going to force us to question to role of "work" in society,
and if it's more important to earn lots of money while being away from your
family and living and extremely unhealthy life, or if it's more important to
earn less money, and have more time with family and healthy living.

Yes, the world is about to change - and _keep_ changing - and it's going to
change whether you resist it or not.

~~~
cr1895
>You actually think it's a good thing that millions of people spend their time
this way!

I think you're putting words in riskable's mouth. What the comment actually
said is that you were vastly underestimating the disruption in comparing it to
milkmen, etc. There wasn't any judgment whether it was a good thing or not.

~~~
bko
The percentage of Americans employed as farmers in the US far exceeded that of
trucker drivers. Yes there was disruption, but those people didn't permanently
go on to be the underclass unemployed of society. They and their descendants
went on to more fruitful activities. The thing is, at the time, you couldn't
imagine what those activities would be.

[0]
[http://www.usda.gov/factbook/art/fig31.jpg](http://www.usda.gov/factbook/art/fig31.jpg)

~~~
cullenking
Oh, you mean all the farmers and factory workers that made up the Midwest,
which are now overwhelmingly trump supporters, largely because of the
destruction of all economic opportunity in their region?

~~~
refurb
Huh? The US moved away from farming as a key employer what? 80 years ago? It
has nothing to do with Trump.

~~~
cullenking
Sorry, I should have reserved my comment for a day when I am not recovering
from a sinus infection :) Farming, in the midwest at least, was a dying but
still widely practiced profession up into the early 80's. This also includes
meat farming. The farm consolidation really got into the swing of things in
the mid 80's. Add in the decimation of the auto and steel (and supporting
industries) and you see a period from 1960 - 1990 that had an unprecedented
level of people forced out of work due to automation and lost jobs.

The Trump comment was tossed in because it's been easy to forget about this
stuff as a coastal living millenial, and the recent Trump phenomenon has
brought it back to the forefront.

Sorry for the initial snarky comment!

------
petra
One interesting thing here is the savings, even though there's a driver.

They say "more frequent schedules" . How ?

~~~
kriro
Not sure about US laws but in Europe there's mendatory rest periods for
drivers. Drive n hours, sleep/rest m hours where m is relatively large. For an
autonomous vehicle that time is reduced to zero (I'd assume)

~~~
petra
Mandatory rest exists in the US. But i assume the guy watching over the self
driving car, should follow those laws.

~~~
Eridrus
That assumes that it needs supervision and the driver isn't just there for the
first/last mile.

------
madengr
Like the last mile for telecom, they need to solve the last 20 foot; get me a
beer from the fridge.

~~~
kodis
I suspect that what will happen initially is that a human driver will be
tasked with getting the truck to and from the nearest highway entrance, with
the autopilot taking it from there. This is similar to how ships operate, with
local pilots guiding the ship in and out of harbors and the ship's captain
handling the at sea portion of the journey.

Also, and only half in jest, Budweiser? In Colorado? Regardless of my opinion
of their beers I would have expected a delivery of Coors instead.

------
potel576
Anyone think this was a media response from Uber to combat the video Tesla put
out last week?

------
madengr
So do self driving vehicles have to be licensed, such as passing a safety
test? Or is the fact a licensed driver is in the vehicle good enough? That
requirement is not good enough as student drivers still need a learners
permit.

------
jefecoon
How is it possible that no one else has already commented that Uber's first
truck delivery is basically self-driving Smokey & The Bandit???

Well played Uber, well played.

------
stevetrewick
Video from Otto's YouTube chan :

[http://youtu.be/Qb0Kzb3haK8](http://youtu.be/Qb0Kzb3haK8)

------
kwellington
I think the logical conclusion to self-driving is just turning our roads into
digital rails.

So all this work on proprietary algos/hardware for self-driving are so much in
vain.

This grey area of 'well yeah, it's 'self-driving' but you still need to be
ready to take over at any second' won't fly for long. Either you're driving,
or we have true self-driving cars and SMART ROADS to match, to the point where
you can take a nap in the back seat.

~~~
Ensorceled
I think you are confusing the current social and legal climate for self
driving cars with what the technology can do in 5-10 years.

For example, if the law says "there must be a licensed driver ready to take
control at all times" then it doesn't really matter what the technology can
do.

~~~
JBReefer
It's easier to change the minds of men than it is to build a near copy of the
mind of a man

------
Frogolocalypse
If I were a truck driver, I would be very worried about this tech, and be
thinking how I can get some other skill...

------
sirshoelace
interesting that Budweiser was a large driving force in the invention of
refrigerated train cars, and now they are the first delivery with the
driverless truck. AB-Inbev definitely understand the importance of
distribution and are always looking at new technologies to make it more
efficient.

------
wastedhours
The marketer in me prays they take a "don't drink and drive" ad play with this
one.

------
gregpilling
TL;DR. Self drive will create jobs, not eliminate them.

I read a lot about self drive putting truck drivers out of work - and I think
I disagree.

My bias - I own a factory and we ship and receive goods constantly, from
overnight envelopes to pallets. I would say that we get every normal form of
delivery at least once a week. UPS, Fedex, USPS, dozens of trucking companies,
dozen of supplier owned fleets. Shipments outbound last month were over 50,000
pounds. We are small, but that is still a lot of shipping. Enough that I know
what I am talking about.

I am a self drive enthusiast. I look forward to its everyday use, and I have
spent 100s of hours trying to think through the implications (and how my auto
parts company will fit into it).

With this perspective, I can't see how the driver will be replaced until we
have intelligent humanoid robots. The delivery and pickup environment is
different in every building. Drivers are also collecting money, and delivering
invoices, and doing all sorts of other tasks that the truck simply won't be
able to do. Driving the truck is only half the job. Whenever I send a delivery
to be done by one of my staff (we have no dedicated deliver person; it's
whoever is available) then the instructions to actually get the thing there
would be a nightmare to explain to a computer.

Example-- (Recent deliver to auto dealership: Go in the side door, not the
front. Find Sarah; if you give the box to Jane she will not take it to the
back. Find Sarah, she will get the box to Gary. They are expecting you.
Remember! Side door, the one marked "Do Not Enter". The front door is for
retail customers, we are a supplier and they need this right now.)

I do hope that the advent of self drive will lower costs, and thus my shipping
expenses. Shipping by the pallet is not that cheap; sending 500 pounds (225
kilo) only halfway across the USA costs me just under 50 cents per pound, or
about $250 USD. Freight companies can charge gigantic differences by small
changes in address. I am all for their disruption. I once had to pay an extra
$100 because the address was on the wrong side of an 8 lane bridge, literal
highway robbery.

If shipping costs drop, then I will bundle free shipping to my commercial
accounts (98% of business), not just to retail accounts. Supplier owned fleets
will deliver with smaller minimum orders to be competitive. This will all
cause the need for drivers/attendants to INCREASE not decrease.

Its possible that the job of "truck driver" may turn into "automated truck
interface person" but that would not be a net job loss; it would be a transfer
into a different category. If my shipping costs drop, then my number of
shipments will go up dramatically while at the same time the size of shipments
will likely get smaller. Why order by the pallet, when by the case is the same
price.

As with the e-commerce revolution, this is going to happen over a period of
decades not years. Even now, 20 years of Amazon later, e-commerce has not
broken the 10% of retail yet. All the handwringing over lost jobs is going to
happen way slower than anyone thinks.

------
losteverything
Bear with me

In can see a way where unions can make a comeback.

Lately I socialized driverless with people in my daily routine. None -even the
tesla owner brother - would get into a driverless car. Safety and trust is
mentioned.

Now we have workers potentially displaced. Some in unions. Some not. But
associating with a union for the sake of perceived safety could be a real
winner. These drivers under "x" union do not have unsafe driverless vehicles.

~~~
mason240
Good example of how unions impede progress.

~~~
losteverything
Yes. Quite true.

The union is to protect workers wages and rights (they won during agreement)

Union is a five letter word. Everyone drives. Its freedom. I think one
positive PR decision for a union would be to sew together the uncertainty of
driver less vehicles on the Eisenhower highway system built for defense with
traditional non union population.

"Our drivers Are safe. Keep the Eisenhower interstate system for safe drivers.
"

