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Comment by scoopertrooper | Hacker News Reader

An autonomous truck could drive twice as conservatively as a regular truck driver or even just pull over in bad weather and still deliver its load faster than a human driver. A human has to stop for 10 hours every 11 hours, while an AI truck and just sail on through. Tandem drivers might be competitive on time, but now you're paying two humans!

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That article on efficiency comes to mind: currently businesses have some slack built in on their deliveries because they can only arrive so quickly.

If AI trucks are the norm, and all that slack is eliminated for efficiency sake because the "AI truck can always get here in 13 hours, no stopping", then that increased efficiency only raises the urgency that it arrives on time, thereby eliminating the time savings on delivery.

> Tandem drivers might be competitive on time, but now you're paying two humans!

But you're only paying them for the time they're driving - so this is actually incredibly efficient.

That's not how labor laws work in many countries - if a driver is sleeping in the car, and not in his own bed at home that still counts as working time.

But they reach the destination in half the time.

I actually looked into this, you're half right. Truckers don't get paid by the hour, rather they're paid by the mile (or km). Each member of the pairing gets paid for half of the total distance of the journey. However, tandem teams are in high demand as customers are willing to pay a significant premium to get their goods delivered quickly. This has resulted in team drivers earning more for a unit of travel than solo operators.

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