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Comment by djrogers | Hacker News Reader

Truckers generally get paid per mile, not per hour. They are also heavily regulated as to the number of hours they can drive (why you see so many husband/wife driving teams).

One can easily foresee a future where a self-driving truck has a driver in it who is only driving 'regulated' hours for a small portion of a trip (say during high traffic, highway entry/exit, etc). The driver could spend the rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding - he'd basically be a passenger.

If a truck can haul for 20-30 hours without stopping for overnights, that dramatically changes the economies of fast freight.

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Coding is a very HN comment :)

More realistically, he can do the trucking office work from the truck.

Truck drivers don't do office work, really. All of the documents like bill of lading, etc are taken care of by the office workers of the company the driver works with.

They have to do paperwork like logging hours, doing a pre-trip inspection, etc. This is done during off-time while the driver isn't driving (for obvious reasons). Usually on the driver's seat with a clipboard on the steering wheel :D

they don't write code while they're driving right now either.

but if they suddenly started sitting in a truck doing nothing all day instead of driving, it's a lot more likely that some office duties would be shifted to the truckers rather than the truckers taking on totally unrelated projects.

This was my thought.

> One can easily foresee a future where a self-driving truck has a driver in it who is only driving 'regulated' hours for a small portion of a trip (say during high traffic, highway entry/exit, etc). The driver could spend the rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding - he'd basically be a passenger.

That kinda already exists though, with team driving. Two pilots relaying gives ~22h of driving per 24h plus 2x30mn slack (under US regs, though there's still a limit of 70h/8 days followed by 34h rest per driver).

> That kinda already exists though, with team driving. Two pilots relaying gives ~22h of driving per 24h plus 2x30mn slack (under US regs, though there's still a limit of 70h/8 days followed by 34h rest per driver).

So at minimum labor costs could halve... Sounds like a huge productivity boost.

> So at minimum labor costs could halve... Sounds like a huge productivity boost.

It's not a change in productivity at all.

Also

> Truckers generally get paid per mile, not per hour.

One person getting the job of two people done is indeed a [giant] productivity boost. Compensation will surely change along with the industry, but there's not a reason to suspect drivers will be the winners in this.

You typically pay a surcharge for a team load, usually because you effectively move your load 1000 miles a day instead of 500. For certain types of loads, team drivers are how you make up for manufacturing delays.

rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding

Problematic in at least two ways, probably three.

Even if (and that's a very big if) we get to a point where we decide we need someone behind the wheel of these truck, but it's okay for them to be staring at a laptop the entire time, I can't see a whole lot of quality code coming from someone who is sitting in the cabin of a truck with one eye constantly on the road.

That's why you hire 10x coders to do it, so that the worst you get is 2-3x.

Just when I thought there wasn’t anything worse than the open office plan.

It brings a whole new meaning to the word “shipping”.

> Just when I thought there wasn’t anything worse than the open office plan.

Eh. A truck cabin sounds better. You can have music without needing to wear cans, you don't hear jim's mastication or janice's burping you don't get assaulted by emily's lack of hygiene or randy's mix of aggressive cologne and smelly feet, you decide what temperature you're most comfortable at, you can work without pants, …

The main issue would be 'net connectivity.

I'm not kidding: I've imagined exactly that as a career change more than once. Live on the road, see new places every day, hack on open source projects, write, spend time with someone with similar interests (the hardest part). What's not to love?

Even removing the autonomous angle, I've thought about driving during the day and having laptop time for the same activities during rest periods. Probably seems weird, but I'd be in if I could make it work. I do my best thinking behind the wheel, and I've solved a number of engineering problems on road trips. It seems ideal.

> I've thought about driving during the day and having laptop time for the same activities during rest periods. Probably seems weird, but I'd be in if I could make it work. I do my best thinking behind the wheel, and I've solved a number of engineering problems on road trips. It seems ideal.

I hear trucking causes quite a bit of fatigue.

Why? I'm speaking of a completely autonomous truck, not some level 2 adaptive cruise control. The 'driver' could be sitting on a couch or at a desk in his sleeper cab the whole time.

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