Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?
* long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends,
* possibility to stretch and move your body is very limited,
* bad hyper-processed food, hence so many drivers are obese,
* the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
* plus, as mentioned here, both the drivers and their managers are incentivized to break and bend the law, resulting in unsafe driving.
All of the above would be mitigated by robots taking the wheel.
Calling bullshit here. If they weren't doing that work, they probably would not, in fact, get extra time with family/friends.
>the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,
Team drives can cover a majority of the day if need be for long hauling. Short hauling/last mile is capped not so much by miles traveled, but cargo load and unload times.
Folks, get over robotically doing these things.
Truck driver is the most numerous blue-collar profession in the US, if I remember correctly it counts several million people. I wouldn't expect all of them to become automotive AI model trainers overnight.
You can say that they would have collapsed over something else if they stayed at home, but this is what the people themselves told me.
Driving to Spain and back takes two weeks. After two weeks of his absence "I felt like a young widow already", said Hana, the youngest of the wives.
Trains are most efficient when they are long. 30+ cars, ideally. Capacity of railway lines is limited and lines tend to be shared by passenger traffic as well, so freight mostly moves at night and short freight trains are economically unviable.
It might take a long time to gather enough stuff/containers to fill 30 freight cars in one particular railway head (obvious exceptions such as Port of Rotterdam apply). Which means that you may have to wait for 10 days before your shipment actually starts to move.
We aren't that patient anymore.
From Czechia (based on your name)? Why so long?
* Pauses are required.
* Some roads cannot be used by some vehicles and/or cargo, especially in the Alps. Same with tunnels.
* Some countries ban trucks from their roads on certain days and hours, so a day off whether you want it or no.
* Sometimes your employer tells you to avoid some extra expensive road even at the cost of longer driving time. (Europe has a myriad of toll systems.)
* The cargo for the return journey is usually not ready on the same day, might well take five.
There are lots of people that do not have the capacity to move up the 'value chain'. All they are capable of doing are 'simple' jobs:
> To enlist in the Army, aspiring recruits typically must take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test and earn a passing score. The ASVAB, with a maximum score of 99, requires a minimum score of 31 for Army enlistment.
> The ASVAB test encompasses various subject areas or subtests, including general science (GS), arithmetic reasoning (AR), word knowledge (WK), paragraph comprehension (PC), mathematics knowledge (MK), electronics information (EI), auto and shop information (AS), mechanical comprehension (MC), and assembling objects (AO).
* https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab/asvab-and-a...
If all/many of those jobs are automated away, how are those people supposed to make a living? It's possible to be 'too stupid' to even be in the military (or at least be in it and have a useful role).