In the US, all major metropolitan areas have a network of trucker fuel/food/shopping stops positioned at the major truck routes around the metros. The big players are Pilot Flying J and Love's. There might be a play by Berkshire Hathaway to leverage the network of these truck stops into trucking automation hubs, as they intend to purchase 80% of Pilot Flying J by 2023.
If we catch news of Pilot Flying J upgrading some of their Net connections far beyond what would normally be needed (say into 10 gigabit ranges and up), and correspondingly investing in Cisco-level WiFi gear (their WiFi is notoriously awful among truckers), that might be a sign of laying in the networking groundwork of a data-intensive hub where they charge the trucking companies for high-speed real-time truck updates at the hub, for example.
If we catch news of Pilot Flying J buying a fleet of near Level 5 self-driving cars, then that might be another sign. Reefer trucks sometimes take about 4-6 hours to unload, vans almost as long. If carrying produce it can be 6-12 hours to load. If you switch to a metro-based hub system, then your drivers show up at the hub, and any load longer than the time it takes to drive to the hub, get another load assigned, and get another driver dispatched to the drop/load point, sees the truck arrive with a self-driving car behind it in "little duckling mode", tailing the truck, reducing the problem space for the self-driving programs. Driver positions the trailer, gets in car, goes back to hub for next load.
That change converts nearly every load into drop/hooks. This increases profitability by stripping out a ton of dead wait time. Driver wages and quality of life, and corporate profits, can go up in tandem while rates go down for customers. Customers won't be pressured to rush through the load/unload cycle (it can be priced lower than if a trucker is waiting), and trucking companies will have a huge, immediate profit incentive to pressure customers to pay for any trucker time required for helping load/unload contents, and truckers can partake in paid assistance for loading/unloading.
An efficient Uber-style dispatch system would be required, because there are options to route drivers in a "duckling car" to go directly to another load in the metro, then drive the load back to the hub, for example; I see a lot of optimization scenarios, all dramatically driving up trucker utilization. Whoever is working on automated long-haul trucking also needs to work on automated drop/hooking at the hubs, so automated rigs can drop off and pick up trailers without human assistance, saving even more time.
In the US, all major metropolitan areas have a network of trucker fuel/food/shopping stops positioned at the major truck routes around the metros. The big players are Pilot Flying J and Love's. There might be a play by Berkshire Hathaway to leverage the network of these truck stops into trucking automation hubs, as they intend to purchase 80% of Pilot Flying J by 2023.
If we catch news of Pilot Flying J upgrading some of their Net connections far beyond what would normally be needed (say into 10 gigabit ranges and up), and correspondingly investing in Cisco-level WiFi gear (their WiFi is notoriously awful among truckers), that might be a sign of laying in the networking groundwork of a data-intensive hub where they charge the trucking companies for high-speed real-time truck updates at the hub, for example.
If we catch news of Pilot Flying J buying a fleet of near Level 5 self-driving cars, then that might be another sign. Reefer trucks sometimes take about 4-6 hours to unload, vans almost as long. If carrying produce it can be 6-12 hours to load. If you switch to a metro-based hub system, then your drivers show up at the hub, and any load longer than the time it takes to drive to the hub, get another load assigned, and get another driver dispatched to the drop/load point, sees the truck arrive with a self-driving car behind it in "little duckling mode", tailing the truck, reducing the problem space for the self-driving programs. Driver positions the trailer, gets in car, goes back to hub for next load.
That change converts nearly every load into drop/hooks. This increases profitability by stripping out a ton of dead wait time. Driver wages and quality of life, and corporate profits, can go up in tandem while rates go down for customers. Customers won't be pressured to rush through the load/unload cycle (it can be priced lower than if a trucker is waiting), and trucking companies will have a huge, immediate profit incentive to pressure customers to pay for any trucker time required for helping load/unload contents, and truckers can partake in paid assistance for loading/unloading.
An efficient Uber-style dispatch system would be required, because there are options to route drivers in a "duckling car" to go directly to another load in the metro, then drive the load back to the hub, for example; I see a lot of optimization scenarios, all dramatically driving up trucker utilization. Whoever is working on automated long-haul trucking also needs to work on automated drop/hooking at the hubs, so automated rigs can drop off and pick up trailers without human assistance, saving even more time.