Self-Driving Trucks Could Replace 90% of Human Long-Distance Truckers, Finds Study

There are already several startups focused on replacing long-haul freight trucks with self-driving trucks, reports Bloomberg - and the potential is huge. (Alternate URLs here and here.)The short trip from a factory or distribution center to an interstate is usually far more complicated than the next several hundred miles. The same is true once the machine exits the interstate. One solution is for trucking companies to set up transfer stations at either end, where human drivers handle the tricky first leg of the trip and then hitch their cargo up to robot rigs for the tiresome middle portion. Another station at the exit would flip the freight back to an analog truck for delivery. Such a system, according to a new study out of the University of Michigan, could replace about 90% of human driving in U.S. long-haul trucking, the equivalent of roughly 500,000 jobs. "When we talked to truck drivers, literally every one said, 'Yeah, this part of the job can be automated,'" explained Aniruddh Mohan, a PhD candidate in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-author of the study. "We thought they would be a bit more dubious." There are, however, a handful of big ifs. For one, the autonomous systems would have to figure out how to navigate in crummy weather far better than they can now. Second, regulators in many states still haven't cleared the way for robot rigs. Finally, there's the infrastructure to consider - all the transfer stations where the cargo would pass from the caffeine-fueled analog to the algorithms. Still, if trucking companies focused only on America's Sun Belt, they could fairly easily offset 10% of human driving, the study shows. If they deployed the robots nationwide, but in warmer months only, half of the country's trucking hours could go autonomous. The article points out that as it is, the workforce of low-paid long-haul truckers "tends to turn over entirely every 12 months or so." "At the moment, the industry is short about 61,000 drivers, according to the American Trucking Associations."

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