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Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

Truly incredible project that I would never wanted to work on because when it suceed, all drivers can go look for another job.

The video is nice to see a professional driver even in his orange vest driving truck ten thausand miles away. And once he is done he shuts down his laptop and walks to the room next door, where his wife cooks dinner to play with their kid. Right?

If reality of automatization learnt us anything so far, is that all these people will be fired almost overnight, and the huge hangar of $2/hour Phillipino “drivers” will be hired to most drive most likely multiple trucks at once, because why the hell not to divide screen in four.

The only good thing is that we are some 10-15 years away from full implementation, but if I were you I would not look for long and prosperous career as a truck driver.

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> The only good thing is that we are some 10-15 years away from full implementation, but if I were you I would not look for long and prosperous career as a truck driver.

(I work at Starsky)

That's one way to say it. Another is that the industry is suffering from a major lack of qualified drivers. Earlier this week, we announced our operation of a commercial trucking company in addition to our autonomous R&D group. We're getting better-than-average employee retention by offering employee-drivers a career path out of long-haul driving if they want it. Even so, we've heard tons of stories from our drivers about poor working conditions at other companies, and people quitting after only 3-4 months.

For whatever reason, trucking skews older. Younger people just don't want to do it. Which is fine, except that groceries, diapers, and everything you order from Amazon won't get delivered by itself.

[...] Another is that the industry is suffering from a major lack of qualified drivers [...] we've heard tons of stories from our drivers about poor working conditions at other companies, and people quitting after only 3-4 months. [...]

Which one is it - shortage of drivers, or poor treatment of drivers? You can't have both, look at the software engineers for an example of actual shortage.

Starsky CEO here: surprisingly it's both. Truck drivers have limited productivity (freight rates set by the market, cant drive more than one truck at a time), but it's also a large fragmented industry where many players have a zero-sum mindset.

Shippers often take too long to load your truck, which costs you scarce driving time. Your carrier might stiff you on you last weeks pay, because driving is too hectic and they're too far away for you to chase them in small claims court.

There arent enough drivers, but the industry also has many bad actors who are mean to the drivers that there are.

Of course you can have both, especially when one is the cause of the other.

Don't get me wrong - you guys accomplished incredible stuff so I am far from dissing you.

But to think you finally open your offer to Wallmart and all other big stuff-movers and not to see them drooling at the fact that they can cut their workforce 15% and just hire turk-style operators at $2/hour is just naive.

While your technology is amazing, the assumption that you will have same trucker seating at the wheel now siting at the joystick comfy at home at the same rate is wrong IMHO.

Starsky CEO here. Not an unrealistic thought at all.

My childish/idealistic personal thesis is that if you think 10-20% more, you can make "doing the right thing" into "doing the long-term profitable thing." Most business leaders are just too lazy / short-sighted to put in the extra effort.

Part of why we're being the operator is to make sure the teleop drivers can be paid well. Now, we might have competitors in time who mess that up, but if regulators which I think can be prevented by regulators and other stakeholders

I think the <insert minority/foreign country here> will steal our jobs narrative doesn't really work here.

This will cut jobs, yes, but as a latency/redundancy sensitive application jobs servicing this will be geolocked to 'hubs' of some form. Like air traffic control, but for trucks.

Lowering the number of jobs needed should be a good thing. Moving more money into a poorer area should be a good thing.

The problem is not automation, it's the expectation that without a high-paying job you need to work 40 I mean 50 I mean 60 hours to make a living.

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