Posted on 05/19/2015 7:56:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In just a few years, communities that depend on the trucking industry for their vitality will be facing major economic disruption.
Roscoe, Nebraska, is a good place to contemplate how the evolution of long-haul travel can change a community. This unincorporated settlement—some classify Roscoe as a “semi-ghost town”—sits about seven miles east of the city of Ogallala along U.S. 30, which follows the old Lincoln Highway route and before that, various overland migration trails to California, Oregon and Utah.
Just off U.S. 30, opposite the Union Pacific freight-rail tracks, there’s an abandoned gas station with its former pump, pictured above, standing as a relic from a different era of travel when overland motorists crossed this sparsely populated area of western Nebraska on the Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first transcontinental highway.
That was before Interstate 80 was constructed following a parallel route a few miles to the south. And that highway, like so many other Interstate highways, allowed cross-country traffic—including truck drivers hauling freight—to bypass the smaller towns and medium-size cities that spring up along the older routes.
Today, at the local exit leading from I-80 to Roscoe, there are no traveler services. There’s a rest area a few miles down the road and plenty more traveler services clustered nearby at the exit for Ogallala, which includes outposts for TravelCenters of America and Sapp Bros. Travel Centers, plus Denny’s, a Holiday Inn Express and Days Inn.
While autonomous vehicle technology has raised big questions about the future of mobility in urban areas, the long-term impact of driverless innovation on small-town economies supported by the trucking industry is perhaps less understood.
But it’s safe to say that the future industry disruption that driverless semi-trucks hauling freight will bring is poised to cause some serious pain for local communities that depend on human truck drivers.
In a recent Medium post, Scott Santens, a New Orleans-based writer-blogger who focuses on the intersection of poverty, inequality and technological advancement, writes about the looming “one-two punch to America’s gut” that will come from driverless trucks:
We are facing the decimation of entire small town economies, a disruption the likes of which we haven’t seen since the construction of the interstate highway system itself bypassed entire towns.
Santens continues:
Those working in these restaurants and motels along truck-driving routes are also consumers within their own local economies. Think about what a server spends her paycheck and tips on in her own community, and what a motel maid spends from her earnings into the same community. That spending creates other paychecks in turn. So now we’re not only talking about millions more who depend on those who depend on truck drivers, but we’re also talking about entire small town communities full of people who depend on all of the above in more rural areas. With any amount of reduced consumer spending, these local economies will shrink.
What could that mean for a state like Nebraska?
According to the Nebraska Trucking Association, the trucking industry employs one out of every 12 workers in the state, roughly 63,000 jobs. Trucks carry 76 percent of manufactured tonnage in the state. And more than 48 percent of Nebraska communities rely on trucks to move their goods.
Driverless trucks will still need to refuel on their cross-country treks, but advances in technology will, in time, reduce the need to have as many humans involved the trucking industry.
The first driverless truck hit the roads in Nevada this month.
And while there’s still a lot of testing ahead for autonomous driving technology in the trucking industry, Santens writes it’s a question of when, not if, major disruption is coming for communities that depend on trucking. “. . . [We’re] looking at a window of massive disruption starting somewhere between 2020 and 2030,” he writes.
And that could lead to plenty of truck stop settlements across the nation ending up like Roscoe, undermined by big changes in the way we travel and ship goods on America’s highway network.
I’ll say truck collidion repair centers. I predict plenty of work too.
To be good at sales, you have to have the knack, it isn’t something that just anyone can do.
A good example is the days of door to door sales, almost none of those people could sale, and classes couldn’t change them, I saw hundreds and hundreds come and go.
I also saw the old giants of the pre-3 day cancellation clause days come and go, they never adapted to the laws being passed, giving customers 3 days to cancel.
Boiler rooms are the same, very few people can do well, sales is extremely difficult, or else everyone would be selling cars and aluminum siding, or whatever it is today, and begging to work on commission.
High-tech vertical farming facility taking shape in north Pasadena (Texas)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3278268/posts
Good point. A new occupation is born: driverless truck hijacker. True, it's a criminal occupation, but these days we take what we can get.
I don't see how driverless trucks could be well defended. The trucks and their cargo are just property. AFAIK it is not legal to use lethal force to defend property.
I very much like the idea of small communities trying to be self-sufficient. Growing food, and engaging in small-scale manufacturing. I believe that people can build good lives living simply and focusing on their hands, their minds, and their shared skills. Rebuild community in small pockets. Because the globalism thing isn’t working out for the majority of people.
Or a hacker pulls it off the Interstate.
They will adapt or disappear. Tis the nature of change...
Socialism is inevitable. Commoners need jobs to dig ditches. For rations.
Socialism is inevitable. Commoners need jobs to dig ditches. For rations.
“When” and not “if”?
That’ll certainly make me avoid highways. Not that the rigs with drivers make me too fond of the highway now. How would robo-rigs pull over safely in the case of blowouts?
A truckload of cigarettes is worth millions.
Well, since a large part of the systems are very sophisticated computer controlled sensor suites, those robbers would have to be VERY tech savvy not to get caught soon after such a robbery...
Maybe the four and two wheelers will have to take up the slack as clients for the Parking lot lizards?
People give up too early and too easily. Persistence is key. Everything else can be taught to anyone with an IQ over 65. I have been a sales manager and it’s about making x number of calls every day, which is a learning experience in itself. I’ve seen kids hired who knew NOTHING about sales and a year or two later were making six figures. But no, it’s not for everyone. No trade is. Just like the military or medicine. I’d be a terrible mechanic, my mind just doesn’t work that way.
That is the formula, but it is a lot easier said than done, and it takes more than persistence, it takes being able to close, but the persistence is a huge part, and the will to maintain that persistence in the face of constantly take rejection.
There is a reason that few people succeed in difficult sales, the hard core kind, the sales involving self management, little to zero support, and cold calls.
Many people think that sales looks easy, what they don’t realize, is that it is much tougher than regular jobs, a true salesman is someone who never wants to NOT be working for commission, and most people don’t want to work on straight commission.
Kinda the way things were when little towns popped up along the railroads. Obviously things came in and went out by rail but most people worked locally.
My little town was born along a railroad. Actually it was born at a crossroad about a mile south but when the rail arrived the town moved to it. Products that were produced here went out and products produced elsewhere came it.
It’s got to be time tested to be believable. That is, there are so many scenarios that can crop up that an experienced human mind can create a safe solution to and make appropriate responses.
It’s just going to be interesting to see how these trucks respond to icy roads, snow blocked roads where one has to assume where the road is based on sign, tree and building locations, how they deal with oversized agricultural equipment, construction areas where the road guard chick holds up a stop sign. Will there be sensors for overheating flat tires that a human driver can detect by seeing smoke out the rear view mirror? The list of things a human can do is endless that needs to be programmed into the computer and have sensors to detect.
Then there’s going through cities. How does the truck respond to emergency vehicles? Kids running out in front chasing a ball?
The list is endless.
Until this has been successfully road tested for a few years without incidents, THIS IS BULLSHIT!
If it is truly only a few people that master sales, please explain our economy. Some of my best salespeople were recent immigrants who could only speak rudimentary English but wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Vertical farming would be a great industry in small towns.
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