Americans will do anything to avoid just using trains.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with you, trains are used here all the time specifically for long haul stuff.
Rail is used in the US. We just don’t have as much rail infustructure so they can only get so far. If the port/factory/wearhouse aren’t connect by rail then they’ll have to use trucks for at least part of the transit.
I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn’t really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.
Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we’d get full truckload sized orders.
When it came to them, often “intermodal” shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.
As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.
However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.
It wasn’t usually a drastic difference, we’re talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren’t many places in the US that we couldn’t get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.
It always blew my mind that we didn’t or couldn’t push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.
I don’t claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I’d think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn’t anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time
Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.
Inventory became evil decades ago. “Just In Time” logistics became the norm instead of having warehoused inventory on hand. The beancounters all decided inventory was money that was sitting around not doing anything and maintaining the warehouse space cost more too. Can’t have those costs on the balance sheet. So speed in receiving smaller shipments more often is now the norm, along with ordering when you need them instead of ordering ahead of time, because some beancounter isn’t gonna be happy about extra inventory.
Honestly, in that case it’s not even an inventory thing, just plan on ordering a couple days earlier and go for the longer slower shipping method so it ends up arriving on the same day. You don’t have to warehouse it any longer than if you ordered it later with faster shipping, and you save a decent chunk of cash.
as these tariffs start kicking in, companies are really going to regret not having local inventory.
The beancounters are right about the costs. What they’re not right about is the risks. JIT supply chains are much more fragile, and to achieve some degree of resiliency, even sophisticated manufacturers will often mantain stockpiles of some critical goods. And things get even more funky when there’s only one good supplier for something, or the cost of switching suppliers is high.
It’s always the fucking accountants.
Except that nearly all US rail is for freight. We hate PASSENGER trains. We freaking love freight rail.
Except that’s rail only carries 16% of freight by weight and 2% of freight by value.
Pretty sure USA hates freight rail too.
You’re looking at a different issue. I’m referring to passenger trains vs freight trains and you’re talking about freight trains vs semi trucks. I’m saying that the rail we do have, we overwhelmingly use for freight. It’s the primary reason we still have trains today in the US.
In regards to percentage of freight shipped by rail vs other means, I believe you that semis take a ton of that.
But american freight trains are laughably bad too
Yes, but “we will avoid trains no matter what” is blatantly false. It’s terrible, but it is our main method of shipping freight from ports to inland cities.
And semi rigs (which are the topic of this post) are…personal transport?
No, the subject is shipping cargo. Try to keep up.
You were the one that brought passengers into the conversation.
Yeah… Saying we don’t use them as much as… Freight. Try to keep up?
Trains help poor people too. We like to pretend we don’t have poor people. Makes them easier to ignore while pretending to be Christian.
Not much competition in railways. Like literally none.
Why not make automated trains with their own dedicated right of way?
But that would require investment in infrastructure…
Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.
Yes, but that’s all subsidized by taxpayers, so it’s more expensive overall but cheaper for YOU.
Privatize gains, socialize losses. The CapitalistTM way!
Efficiency, pollution too (even when electric, because tires and break dust are a thing)
Something like 70% of transport-related particulate emissions (and microplastics) are from tire wear.
I’ve already commented on road damage, but yeah, trucking firms bear no costs for the congestion and other road hazards they bring with them. Society, as is so often the case, sucks up those externalities.
There’s definitely direct economic damage here too beyond just repairs and slowness. It’s sniffles business growth because the infrastructure is unreliable.
Sometimes I just like yo imagine how much fun the roads would be without trucks.
What you don’t get is that trucks last less and consume more, therefore it’s better for the robber barons.
*** everyone but the lobbyists liked that ***
They already are automated trains on freight only routes like mines.
Outside of mines or just in mines? I know that mines are becoming more automated but what about commercial routes.
It’s absurd to suggest running a railway to every warehouse in East Bumfuck, Missouri.
No one’s claiming that. Trucks can still handle the last mile just like they do it with container ships.
Im no logistics expert byt ship -> train -> semi sounds like a great infrastructure design especially now as the container is interchangeable between all of these mediums.
As of Thursday, the company’s self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck.
That’s not an impressive number. That’s like 2 days’ worth of driving.
Yeah that’s about 2 and a half round-trips between Dallas and Houston, that’s…not a lot to be calling this thing ready to go and pulling out the safety drivers.
I wonder how these handle accidents, traffic stops, bad lane markings from road construction, mechanical failure, bad weather (heavy rain making it difficult/impossible to see lane markings), etc.
You’d think they would be keeping the safety drivers in place for at least 6+ months of regular long-haul drives and upwards of 100k miles to cover all bases.
That figure is without a human in the truck, not with a safety driver. I.E, they’ve done a bunch of testing beforehand.
Most rigs go at least 1,000,000 miles and that isn’t isn’t even end off life. You’ll be paying not much less than new for a rig that only has 100k, that’s practically brand new. These systems should have 100 million proven miles. These things weight 80,000lbs which can be very hazardous materials.
You should see the pile ups semis cause in low visibility. Even with really good lidar, I hesitant to say autonomous trucks can be safe running off independent systems on full mixed use roads.
We could add those systems to all roads to feed back to semis to know conditions and hazards miles before they reach them. We could build new smart roads for all autonomous vechilce to travel on separately.
Or we could just end the 100+ year old railroad cartel. Could move people and cargo with ease. But that isn’t profitable.
The one article I heard on TechLinked talked about them using lidarr.
So better in every way than a tesla.
Assuming they are top mounted, they have a better scanning coverage than a regular car.Hmm, I thought they were using ligers. I’ll have to go back and read that again.
Take this source as you want. Couldnt find much about it.
Since 2020, Aurora has been deploying Class 8 trucks integrated with its Aurora Driver technology, which contains its proprietary LiDAR. To date, Aurora Driver has traversed over 1,200 miles without a driver present. As the company looked to launch driverless trucks as a service called “Aurora Horizon” in 2024, we reported it had secured $820 million in additional funding to help it reach commercial operations.
and
The Aurora Driver, with proprietary FirstLight lidar that can see over 450 meters ahead, has the ability to spot and react to pedestrians up to 11 seconds sooner than human drivers at highway speeds at night.
You’d think that, but you’re talking about Texas, where corporate profit always wins over people’s safety and well-being.
It’s 5 one way trips. The article says the trucks run from Dallas to Houston which is about 250 miles according to google. It does mention that over 4 years it’s made 10,000 deliveries but I wasn’t sure if that meant as a company or with the self driving trucks but had a driver in the truck for the 10,000 deliveries. It only specifies that the 1,200 miles has been done without a person in the truck.
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Its enough to prove the concept.
If it saves 1% of operating costs trucking businesses will be falling over themselves to implement it.
Nah no one’s going to bother with new tech for 1% - that’s crazy.
Great… I can’t wait to be hit by one of those on my motorcycle
I’d actually bet they’re safer than some tweaked out dude on his 20th hour at the wheel.
Ok, elmo.
Same. Our government can’t even figure out a way for us to trigger a green light so I’m not confident that any self-driving vehicle regulations will consider us either.
Heh, I got hit by that stupid thing today. Luckily the crosswalk button was right there, so I ran over and smacked it before the traffic signal cycled again.
I’ve heard of people doing this but my strategy is to just wait until it’s safe and run the red light or go right and bang a uey.
I couldn’t do that on my 49cc scooter 😅.
I’ve got a 1980 Honda XR500 as well, but it needs some work (and tires, badly) before it’s roadworthy again.
Large neodymium magnet on the bottom will do it. Most are induction activated. They taught this in every motorcycle driving class I ever attended, along with the rules for legally running a red light.
That way you’ll also automatically collect all sorts of valuable metal treasures along the route. For free!!
At least the screws won’t collect in your tires! Lol
No, it won’t. I invite you to get some large magnets and place them directly on the loop cuts in the street.
Well yeah, they have to move over the sensor loop. You can’t just place it in the center. It’s part of a process that happens as, you know, you pull up to the light. They are a little fancy.
This guy inductions.
Thanks dude, well aware they’re looking for an AC signal. The added magnet isn’t going to influence that, is my point.
Besides limited magnetic permeability of the magnet itself (the thing the loop is looking for), it’s physically not big enough. What you really need is an amplified field distortion, e.g. a field coil which reads the sinusoidal signal being emanated by the sense coil, and loudly plays the inverse back so the sense coil thinks a giant block of steel slid over it.
I vaguely remember a dystopian book that described that exact thing as the protagonist thinking he was looking at an odd flag on the front of the truck until he realized what it was. Can’t remember what the book was though 😔
What an incredibly infuriating waste of effort that would be so much better spent on trains, driverless or otherwise.
I disagree. There are many situations where a truck is better suited for transport than a train. The US already has a pretty large freight train network. I agree that there definitely should be more investment in rail as well, but there’s no reason for both not to exist at the same time.
There are, but “long haul routes” are definitely better for a train.
And how do they handle a person slowing down in front of them and hijacking them? At least a human might be able to navigate away aggressively but I think the programming would prevent as much harm as possible.
This new lawless future and we may need to raid corpo lords.
I can’t really imagine people wanting to hijack a truck that’s basically a giant camera and tracking system.
I’ve seen plenty of youtube videos to know people are dumb enough to try this.
The resistance needs supplies!
Really?
Big box truck, no plate or other #s on the rear. Halloween masks for the crew.
I think that’d work, no problem.
If they unloaded the goods to another truck really fucking fast, maybe. Otherwise they’re just being recorded on top of a giant GPS beacon that’s alerting a system that something abnormal is happening so rally nearby law enforcement. It’d way easier to hold up a bookies, with a shotgun, Saul.
I dunno I can see it being done, go in first with a drone and blind the cameras one by one (not hard to rig it up with spray paint) then grab the goods, pick an isolated section of the route so you’re gone by the time anyone comes looking.
I for one predict a glorious era of road pirates.
I’d pay to see that movie.
Bring lots of aluminum foil to wrap it in.
Why do you think a morbidly obese truck driver would have any luck against blaggers with shotguns ?
I think the programming would prevent as much harm as possible.
well, yeah… why wouldn’t you want a human to do the same thing??? you’re watching too many fast and furious movies.
Firstly, no one in an 18 wheeler loaded with cargo is “navigating away” from anyone desperate enough to attempt such a scheme. This entire idea is ludicrous, think about how slow and massive those trucks are.
Secondly, you don’t want an 18 wheeler loaded with cargo being driven aggressively. You’re just escalating the risk of killing yourself and everyone around you, for what, a truckload of insured corporate assets?
Driverless does not meant unmonitored. Aside from numerous sensors, including door sensors, you really think if it suddenly slows to 0 mph at an unscheduled time/location that it’s not going to alert someone? “Hey, your freight just stopped transporting itself. Guess we should do nothing”. Aside from most of these being ready to be taken over by a remote driver if need be for liability and convenience reasons.
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ahhh yes, before he was Gustavo Frein, he was the dude killed by a video game in this
How is it better than trains again?
But, do they speak English?
Terrifying.
I wonder how much our car insurance will go up due to this.
Good. No more freedom convoy MAGA base.
Lot lizard economy in shambles.
But do the drivers speak English? /s
Fuck cars. Fuck massive death trucks even more.
