
Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers - wil_wheat_on
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/06/uber-self-driving-trucks-are-now-moving-cargo-for-uber-freight-customers/
======
nopinsight
For those concerned with jobs to be eliminated, it might not be as big a
problem as we think for the trucking industry.

"Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people
to the industry.

Demographics is a big part of the problem. ATA’s research arm, the American
Transportation Research Institute, recently updated its demographic data on
drivers and found some 57% of drivers are 45 or older. Only 4.4% are 20-24
years old, noted Rebecca Brewster, president and COO of ATRI."

[http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/drivers/news/story/2017/...](http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/drivers/news/story/2017/10/driver-
shortage-could-hit-all-time-high-this-year.aspx)

In addition, there will still be much need for humans to take care of the
maintenance of the trucks and manipulation of the cargo over the next couple
decades. So there will likely be a significant number of truckers still
employed, perhaps with increased productivity.

Also, certain other jobs will create large increases in demand for labor over
the upcoming decades, in particular home care for the elderly and, if we get
politics right, better & more individualized education for the young.

(A reminder) Lump of labor fallacy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)

\---

Added in response to some comments below:

Yes, there will be challenges particularly regarding the distribution of
benefits from increased productivity. The share of wealth garnered to capital
holders will likely increase. People in labor force who have the skills to
develop and maintain automation systems will certainly benefit. (That is why
education and (re)training are crucial.) The rest may enjoy some, but probably
not most, of the larger pie created by advanced technology.

However, the economic pie will be enlarged and there will be more to share.
How the fruits of technology will be distributed will depend to a large extent
on negotiations and politics.

~~~
LethargicStud
Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to
society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that
career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons.
Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire
population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we
consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our quality of life would
be far poorer. This will help future generations drastically even if it hurts
us a bit.

~~~
iak8god
> Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career.

Isn't it lucky we humans are so very good at predicting the future!?

When I was taking computer vision courses little more than a decade ago, self
driving cars were pure science fiction. Part of me hopes software development
is the next job we automate away, just so everyone in forums like this who are
so impressed with their own excellent life choices can see what it's like to
be on the other end of this.

~~~
LethargicStud
> Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully,
> those people can pivot.

We are lucky as software engineers, but I was also making the point that if
your line of work gets automated, hopefully you can pivot. This applies to
everyone, and is similar to when you are no longer enjoying your field of
work. Changing careers is not always an option, but let's not forget that it
usually is when we talk about automating an entire industry and putting them
out of work.

~~~
iak8god
I'm hoping for a future where the machines do all the work required to provide
everything human beings need to survive, AND where we've figured out a
reasonable way to distribute resources in a world where not everyone will be
able to "contribute to society" by spending huge amounts of their waking time
doing something they'd not otherwise do, in exchange for tokens that can be
redeemed for food and shelter.

~~~
orthecreedence
Yes, but that would be communism, so let's just let people who were born into
or stumbled into their wealth amass more of it. I think in general we need to
start being more thoughtful about how the things we do can sometimes be
hurtful to billionaires.

~~~
p2t2p
Well, while you’re joking the original idea of communism and what I’ve been
taught about Lenin was about excatly this - communism is inevitable because of
technical progress. Call it what you want - universal income, handouts, we
will end up in communism.

~~~
tekknik
And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean
technical progress eventually leads to societal failure? Also I believe we
will end up with socialism, not communism.

~~~
spiralx
> And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean
> technical progress eventually leads to societal failure?

Only if you believe that once an attempt at something has failed, all future
attempts will also fail.

> Also I believe we will end up with socialism, not communism.

Socialism is worker control of the means of production, and is an intermediate
step along the route to communism, a fully classless and stateless society.

------
ktpsns
The funny thing in this US-centric view is that we have such a cargo since a
century where _trains_ play the role of "self-driving cargo".

In europe, the decline of cargo on tracks (trains) is also partially owed to
subsidiation of automobile traffic and highway expansions. It is a pity,
because from the raw numbers trains are much less expensive then tracks.

~~~
masklinn
I think that's misplaced, freight is the one area where NA in general and US
in particular absolutely blows every other region out the water. Circa 2010
Rail was ~40% of US freight by ton-mile, whereas for the EU it was ~17%, and
the US had 10x more tonne-kilometer freight rail than the EU (beyond China and
Russia, with India a _very distant_ third) (nb: China carried more tonnes
total but shorter distances)

Of course a major reason for that is that the US have (literally) tons of
commodities, a significant plurality of the tonnage is coal. I expect roughly
the same of Russia, China, Australia and India (the other members of the
tonnage top 5, Australia notably haults extremely heavy stuff for very short
distances as it's about on par with the EU for tkm but waaay ahead in total
tonnage).

Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger
rail does not get priority over freight and thus you get the country's lone
"high-speed train" giving way to slow freight leading to an average speed of
130km/h, slower than some non-high-speed intercity service in Europe.

~~~
lawguy
> Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger
> rail does not get priority over freight

They do have priority:

> (c) Preference over freight transportation. -- Except in an emergency,
> intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for
> Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line,
> junction, or crossing...

[http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49-transportation/49-usc-s...](http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49-transportation/49-usc-
sect-24308.html)

~~~
dahart
Passenger rail is supposed to have priority by law, but in practice they don't
always get it. Freight carriers don't always yield, enough so that there are
ongoing legal battles. You can check Amtrak's historical On-Time Performance
and causes of delay here: [https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time-
performance/](https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time-performance/)

My quick sampling of ~10 trains came up with an average around 65% on-time
during the last year. The only one I've ridden, the California Zephyr, is less
than 50%.

[http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding-
time...](http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding-time-
performance/)

[http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/03/24-judge-
sides-...](http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/03/24-judge-sides-with-
freight-carriers-in-amtrak-time-keeping-case)

[http://www.jconline.com/story/money/2017/08/24/csx-digs-
its-...](http://www.jconline.com/story/money/2017/08/24/csx-digs-its-heels-
insists-its-not-purposely-delaying-amtrak-trains/595061001/)

~~~
fenwick67
Yeah I've ridden the Zephyr from Chicago to Colorado (and back) a few times,
and it was off-schedule about half the time, one of them was at least 4 hours
of just sitting there in the train in the middle of nowhere.

One hour I can understand, four is ridiculous. The trip is pleasant and the
views are great but for me to take it again they're going to have to do better
than 50% on-time.

~~~
mikeash
I used to live on a small town on the Empire Builder line a few hours west of
Chicago. It was once a day each way, and we'd get one direction in the
morning, and the opposite direction in the afternoon. Or that was the theory.
Often the morning train was so late that when you heard them sound the horn
you wouldn't know if it was the afternoon train or the "morning" train.

------
lonelyw0lf
The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo??
and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family??

The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid.
Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money.

AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the
AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of these guys who have been
driving our cargo around for whole generations.

~~~
djrogers
Truckers generally get paid per mile, not per hour. They are also heavily
regulated as to the number of _hours_ they can drive (why you see so many
husband/wife driving teams).

One can easily foresee a future where a self-driving truck has a driver in it
who is only driving 'regulated' hours for a small portion of a trip (say
during high traffic, highway entry/exit, etc). The driver could spend the rest
of his time sleeping, reading, or coding - he'd basically be a passenger.

If a truck can haul for 20-30 hours without stopping for overnights, that
dramatically changes the economies of fast freight.

~~~
gaius
_rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding_

Problematic in at least two ways, probably three.

~~~
superfrank
Even if (and that's a very big if) we get to a point where we decide we need
someone behind the wheel of these truck, but it's okay for them to be staring
at a laptop the entire time, I can't see a whole lot of quality code coming
from someone who is sitting in the cabin of a truck with one eye constantly on
the road.

~~~
booleandilemma
Just when I thought there wasn’t anything worse than the open office plan.

It brings a whole new meaning to the word “shipping”.

~~~
masklinn
> Just when I thought there wasn’t anything worse than the open office plan.

Eh. A truck cabin sounds better. You can have music without needing to wear
cans, you don't hear jim's mastication or janice's burping you don't get
assaulted by emily's lack of hygiene or randy's mix of aggressive cologne and
smelly feet, you decide what temperature you're most comfortable at, you can
work without pants, …

The main issue would be 'net connectivity.

------
TorKlingberg
I assume these self-driving trucks still have a human driver in them. So,
which exact parts are self-driving? Is it like Tesla's autopilot where it does
lane following, cruise control and keeping the distance on highways?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
> So, which exact parts are self-driving?

Just enough of it that they can skirt the DOT hour rules about hours worked
while still blaming the driver for any crashes or tickets would be my guess.

That's the obvious lowest hanging fruit as far as trucking is concerned. If
you can automate enough of the long haul grind that the driver could possibly
be sleeping then you have a massive competitive advantage over everyone else.

If you don't automate enough to be able to skirt the DOT time rules there's
not much of a competitive advantage.

~~~
icebraining
I don't think you can skirt them. Time on-duty counts against their daily
limit even if they're not driving (the example given in an official guide is a
trucker taking a bus to get to the truck), so they must still get a proper
rest afterwards. So Uber can't count the "not driving but watching the road"
as time off.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
They're not going to be on duty. They're going to be sleeping in the sleeper,
on paper at least.

~~~
icebraining
And how will they blame a crash on the driver, when the paper say s/he was
sleeping?

------
nickpeterson
I think these companies (autonomous car/truck) understand that they need to
transition these processes slowly over time. I feel like it's better to start
with something only moderately different and iterate than try to completely
reinvent the entire structure of such a large industry.

First they do this, then they automate more and more portions, at each step
reducing the amount of manual, human supervision. It also allows the industry
to more consciously reduce numbers through attrition rather than mass layoffs.
Better to stop young guys from becoming truck drivers and have the automation
increase over 10-15 years until it just really isn't a career. The only people
that will be affected are in the 25-35 age range now who have already taken
the plunge, but at least they get some time to consider other options.

~~~
nixgeek
This is a woefully optimistic viewpoint: when the technology is ready there
will be layoffs. IMO.

These companies aren’t slow-playing their hand to avoid layoffs, and it’s a
race to see who can perfect the technology first.

~~~
nickpeterson
No doubt, but I think it's just the nature of complex systems. You could
invent a drug that cures all diseases and maladies, and there would still be
practicing doctors for 5-10 years while the cost/distribution/red-tape was
worked out.

------
bluetwo
I feel like they re-invented the train. :-)

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
When trains become competitive with road transport, maybe we should move more
to using trains. Until then, we won't, and we shouldn't. (If it's a matter of
externalities/hidden subsidies, then the costs of these externalities must be
brought to the entity causing them, e.g. via taxes.)

I don't know why (in Germany) a long-distance bus is much cheaper than a train
(from/to the same city), but it is. We shouldn't be trying to shift traffic to
rail unless there's a good reason beyond "it feels good" for it. If it is
better for the environment, I'd like to see a "citation" (not in the form of
research, but in the form of well-justified taxes/tolls/... that transform
this into a matter of cost).

~~~
Johnny555
If trucks had to pay the full cost of road wear, then trains would be a lot
more attractive for long hauls -- road wear is proportional to the 4th power
of axle weight [1]

An 80,000 pound truck has 8X the axle weigh of a 2000 pound car, so should be
paying 4096 times more road taxes than the car.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating#Impor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating#Importance)

~~~
Dylan16807
Sort of. It looks like a car does about 4x more damage per axle because of
using a single narrow tire[1]. If you compare a pretty typical 4000 pound car
to that maxed-out truck, you would then only get a 64x difference (maybe
closer to 100 depending on weight distribution). Oh and then multiply by the
number of axles.

It would be interesting to look at the costs and savings of 6 or 8 axles in
the back. There's plenty of room to fit, and you could drop wear by a factor
of 10.

Let's also not forget that the truck probably has over a hundred times as much
payload as an average car.

[1]
[http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601](http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I am not sure that I want a company that is most famous for breaking rules,
skirting regulation, and stealing medical records of it's victims operating
large freight trucks on public roads.

~~~
megy
This is a good point, but it can no way be worse than what we have now.

------
natch
Notice that you can extend this model to passengers and long-haul bus, train,
or simply self-driven vehicle transport, in all of which cases Uber is well
positioned.

------
mmazing
Should be a fun day when people realize they can pretty easily hijack
automated trucks.

I assume you could either get in the back of the thing while it's moving, or
simply slow down in front of it and cause it to stop. Unload your newly
acquired goods and be on your way!

~~~
JackFr
What makes you think they would be easier to hijack?

Part of the ease of hijacking truck is that you can drive off with it. What if
the trailer locks its wheels and bricks itself, if it determines it's being
hijacked, all while recording 360 video and sending immediate alerts to
management and law enforcement?

Certainly better than a driver afraid for his life.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Think burglary vs home invasion. It's not just about easier, it's about it
being a different threshold for whether it's worth it. The presence of other
people drastically complicates crimes, and makes it much more likely that
you'll end up dead or in prison for decades.

Also, all the countermeasures you mention aren't free or without issues, and
could be in place now, but aren't. Why not?

~~~
Kalium
In general, the real bottleneck with theft at scale isn't the actual theft.
It's turning the stolen goods into money afterwards and disposing of the
evidence. Items being slightly easier to steal doesn't do much to make them
easier to fence.

------
rconti
Can't we get this technology nailed so well that hopping in a self-driving car
for your day-to-day errands is something you do without a second thought,
BEFORE we start sending out 30 ton missiles as beta tests?

~~~
jstarfish
I agree with the sentiment, but guiding a large missile down a straight
highway with human oversight has many fewer variables than navigating smaller
missiles through crowded urban areas.

~~~
MBCook
Plus given the amount of trucking on certain corridors it might be possible to
get some lanes ‘roped off’ for automated trucking only, further reducing the
risk.

------
fareesh
Does the self driving truck have any kind of security? Given that there is a
"do no harm" program embedded into the driving "subroutines", is there
anything that prevents thieves from essentially surrounding the truck and
robbing it in the middle of nowhere?

Edit: To clarify I mean - in a hypothetical situation where it is ever
driverless, couldnt 10 of us surround it, while I walk in and commandeer it,
disable GPS and drive off ?

~~~
inverse_pi
What prevents 10 of us from surrounding a real truck, walking in, forcing the
driver out and driving off?

[https://xkcd.com/1958/](https://xkcd.com/1958/)

~~~
fareesh
I guess we are presuming that drivers wouldn't simply step on the gas in that
kind of situation.

Also I suspect the absence of a human being in the situation would
psychologically make the theft feel "less wrong" to many would-be criminals.

------
heisenbit
> Uber has a video depicting this journey, which took place staring in then
> midwest and then via short haul to Sanders, Arizona, where it was loaded
> onto an autonomous truck and then transferred to Topock, Arizona, where it
> made the switch to another human-driven vehicle. This is a big step towards
> commercialization of Uber’s autonomous truck tech, and it seems like it puts
> it ahead of some competitors who want to do similar things, including Embark
> trucking. It’s also the first we’ve heard about Uber’s self-driving truck
> business in a little while, so it’s good to see Uber’s continuing to make
> progress and devote attention to this issue.

Uber's main line of business i.e. on demand car transportation is loosing
money. They tell a story that they fix it with self driving cars which
incidentally would require gigantic additional funding. Now they have expanded
into self driving trucks that do already some services with some capacity in
the name of their own surely significant trucking business for some customers
that call for them through their app. This is the real deal, I know because
there is a video.

Musk heaps one money loosing business over the other but at least they all
make sense and are different. With Uber it was doubling down and now tripling
down. Not impressed.

------
vmateixeira
I would be interested to know how would these autonomous cars/trucks behave on
non-linear roads, with potholes, adverse conditions, etc

What kind of problem are these companies trying to address that hasn't been
addressed yet?

Will these trucks be a replacement for trains? I can see the later ones being
way more easy to automate (e.g. London Overground)

~~~
bdamm
I'd expect they'll make potholes much worse, with all trucks driving exactly
over the same spot repeatedly, until they learn to avoid the pothole. Perhaps
Waze-style reporting will fill the gap.

~~~
allannienhuis
Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software?
Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've
seen plenty of ruts from trucks in asphalt roads). Technology like this is an
opportunity to actually improve the wear patterns.

~~~
freeflight
Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about
the wear patterns of public highways?

Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they
don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it.

Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve.
Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for
more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies
start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company
cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street,
to reduce wear?

~~~
allannienhuis
You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer
is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government
oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to
consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles.

But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road
conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower
maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the
company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may
not be true).

Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed
over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present
it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any
way.

I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane
wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of
varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in
exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would
take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were
travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some
amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random
front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these
lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.

------
PeterMikhailov
yay the future is here

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv3vvx/logan-
subt...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv3vvx/logan-subtly-
predicts-our-gritty-future-of-climate-change-and-big-agriculture)

------
ryannevius
I don't mean to be a downer...but is there really anything novel here? I
understand that this is a first step, but I feel like Uber could have
significantly reduced the manual labor required (e.g. to disconnect/connect a
trailer). It seems that the load (mental/physical) on the "driver" of the
self-driving semi will be nearly equal to a driver who has cruise control.

~~~
mav3r1ck
You’re right it’s not that novel. Volvo has self-driving* truck convoys going
back to the 90s I think.

I think for long-haul trucking it’s certainly pretty hard to stay fully tuned
while driving for such long times. And for truck companies, they can save tons
of money on labor when they don’t have to pay the driver for the hours on the
road and just for the manual disconnect/connect docking. Maybe they can make
it fully automated, but why haven’t any trucks done that already? It’s an
easier problem to solve than self-driving.

* by convoy, I mean that one truck up front was driven by a human and then a few were automated to draft from directly behind to just follow the truck in front of them.

EDIT: Here's a source for the 90s, where this paper had a few authors from
Volvo.

from:
[http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/ITFVHA15/...](http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/ITFVHA15/ITFVHA15_USA_FutureTruck_ADP_TF_WhitePaper_Draft_Final_TF_Approved_Sept_2015.pdf)

> _Additionally, different applications of automated driving for trucks have
> been demonstrated across the globe since the 1990’s. The focus has been on
> proof of concept for truck platooning due to the foreseen fuel economy and
> traffic flow benefits._

~~~
hapless
Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain
pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are
willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail,
which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a
little faster.

The reason you pay for long-haul trucking is that you want to have the driver
_already on hand_ for the two short-haul trips at either end of the journey,
navigating complex issues and handling cargo loading. The downside is that you
have to pay the driver for the over-the-road portion. The upside is that
there's zero chance of a driver not being available, and zero chance of the
driver being left idle waiting for the long-haul transport to arrive.

The only novelty here is that Uber is the one paying the pools of short-haul
truckers on either end, and assuming the risk that they will sit idle. (They
are, of course, not going to tell us if it is unprofitable!)

~~~
djsumdog
The US already has one of the largest freight rail networks in the world (at
the expense of having a totally shitty passenger rail network; although that's
starting to change with Florida and California's efforts).

I wish more effort would be put into expanding freight even more so you could
get the same speed and efficiency for shorter hauls, mail and package
delivery. It seems like that would be way more worthwhile than automated
trucks. It's substantially more trivial to automate freight trains as well.
Passenger trains in Singapore, Malaysia and parts of London are already fully
autonomous with no driver at all.

~~~
hapless
The U.S. used to have extensive short-haul rail, even inside cities. That's
how cargo moved around back in the era before inexpensive motorized trucks.

I suspect the reason it disappeared is that rail sidings are large and
expensive compared to truck loading docks. You're not going to have ten
sidings on a property as easily as you stick ten bays in a loading dock.

------
bob_theslob646
What really bothered me at the end of the commerical was the fact that the
person could be in home in time for dinner.

Unless we have some form of UBI, where is that person going to source the
funds to pay for his dinner?

~~~
conanbatt
What I find truly interesting of this thinking is that technological advances
in the future are cataclysmic, but in the past are necessary.

It never becomes something like "lets destroy all the farming machinery, so we
create more jobs plowing the land".

~~~
marcosdumay
Oh, you can rest assured that we have enough cataclysms in history to make the
case.

There's that entire "let's destroy all machinery that is taking your jobs"
movement that gave a name to the "avoiding new things" attitude. All that in a
period when people were choosing between literally dying of huger unemployed
or of extenuation at work.

Just because the cataclysm is temporary does not mean it didn't exist.

~~~
conanbatt
Would you advocate to destroy all the machinery those people clamored against
today?

~~~
marcosdumay
Of course not. But some welfare would have saved a few million lives, greatly
enriched any country (although people didn't know that by the time), and
removed one or two world wars from our history.

~~~
conanbatt
You got some leaps of faith there.

Capitalism was basically born by the application of technology disruptively
like it did. Saddling the creative forces with the consequences can easily
prevent the change from happening at all, and in the end, it is better for the
whole.

