It's probably a good thing, and not nearly as icky as it looks. It's almost certainly inevitable: robots are going to start doing more and more big-rig driving, especially on freeways, especially when conditions aren't challenging.
The good news? They don't fall asleep. They aren't going to be texting or Facebooking on smartphones. They won't even be yelling at one another on CB radios.
The bad news is that they don't cope well with the unexpected. So far, they don't like snow, rain can be problematic, and as for ice on the road, they have more trouble seeing it than you do. They -- and more to the point, us, including the people who are testing them -- aren't hugely comfortable on busy city streets.
But they are coming. Listen -- my line of work once took a lot of people, mainly doing kind of dull jobs that occasionally got very busy but mostly consisted of setting things up ahead of time, pushing buttons on precise cues, and putting the material back into storage, over and over. The busy times, each job ran very close to as much as one person can reliably do at one time. Busy or slow, the work required attention at all times. Scheduling what happened when was a complex game, like three-dimensional Go. And then, we got computers. Scheduling got them first; you still needed a human to double-check and adjust, but a job that took five or six people eight hours now took one person (or two, if you needed to cover vacations and sick time). And step by step, the computers started running more and more of the, well, drudge jobs. The equipment changed. The jobs for people changed. One day, what used to take three or four people could be done by one person and multiple computers -- who still is, at the busiest times, doing as much as one average person can manage to do at one time.
That's the model for trucking. We're liable to have drivers behind the wheel for many more years -- but increasingly, they'll be managing the machines that will do most of the work instead of doing the work themselves. Truck "trains" are a distinct possibility. And the routine parts of the job where a human fails -- the long, dull stretches of highway -- will be handed off to a machine. You can count on it.
The question is, where does the human fit in? Can one person behind the wheel of one truck manage multiple trucks? (It certainly works on rails -- though there are usually two or three people, and the traffic and its management are an altogether different process.)
Automatable jobs will be automated eventually. Me, I moved to fixing the automatons
The other side of this is what powers the trucks. It's easy and fun to sneer at electric vehicles -- after all, the power plant is most likely to burn coal, hundreds of miles away from the vehicle itself. The flip side is, it's a lot easier to hang a really effective muffler on one big coal-fired generating plant than on ten thousand scurrying cars and trucks. Some heavily-used truck routes are looking into overhead catenary cables to power trucks, an ugly but very mature technology you can find running trains and buses in many cities, and a system that can pay off in states with restrictive emissions regulations for vehicles. I think you can count on it. (Personally, I've always liked Robert A. Heinlein's open linear induction motor truckways -- one of the better descriptions can be found in Starman Jones -- but they're inefficient and expensive. On the other hand, they're a lot less ugly than overhead wires, which would help with NIMBY concerns. On the other other hand, the infrastructure would be considerably more costly to build, even before you get around to putting truck-analogs on it.)
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
13 comments:
I think one of the proposed automated-trucking models had "truck trains" with one human-operated truck with maybe ten auto-trucks slaved to it.
I spend a lot (alas!) of time on I-80 with many trucks for company. The biggest beef I have is that they insist on trying to pass each other going uphill. It's like the old SPI game Air War, or the slightly less old GDW game Air Superiority: "Cannot accelerate while climbing."
PS: I have a professional interest in things supply chain, so I find the topic highly interesting. Also, I log a lot of wheel time, so I find it mildly worrisome. :-)
Ah, yes Ken, there's nothing quite like being stuck for miles behind a 57-mile-an-hour truck that is "Ay-Gad" gonna pass that 56-mile-an-hour-truck. Especially when you're someone like me that goes slightly bonkers when you can't see what's in front of the vehicle ahead of you.
Question: If we're going to operate trucks just like trains, why not use the trains we already have for long haul cargo and leave the trucks for local delivery?
Azmountaintroll: because trucks go lost of places trains don't run. IIRC, rail infrastructure is in no way under utilized -- but they aren't great for getting two containerloads directly from point N to point M. Greater containerization facilitates multimodal haulage -- but every time you have to unload and load something, you've spent more money, and the process is still fairly touch-labor intensive. Cargo crane operators make good money -- but they earn every cent of it, and more.
I drove a Suzuki Samurai for many years, and those little jeepettes have just about the same kind of horsepower-to-weight ratio as a tractor-trailer rig. Any highway trip inevitably resulted in getting in with a knot of trucks. As nearly as I can figure, any time they touch the brakes, it costs money; ditto any time they change engine speed. So those few-mile-an-hour passing exercises that so frustrate car drivers are not without reason: once the truck is settled in at cruising speed, the best approach is to not change it. Great for them, not so great for anyone in a normal-type car. --The Samurai would draft very nicely, though, as long as I didn't mind occasionally getting walled in by trucks. (SOP in that thing for any but the slowest of roads was to firewall the throttle and run through the gears as quickly as it would allow. The little engine seems to be quite happy at full output and will run for hours at 65 as smoothly as a sewing machine...once you get up to that speed. You may want to bring a light snack.)
When I drove a rig, my power band was 1550 to 1800 RPM with a rev limiter at 2000. On flat ground, I could run any speed just by picking the right gear - and then run foot on the floor. In hills it gets really tricky, though. That rev limiter starts engine braking on down hill stretches. Either upshift or shift to neutral. On up hills, downshift as you go down through 1600 RPM (and don't miss - you double-clutch or float - no synchronizers!). If you wait too long, you lose the turbo and it goes from 1500 to 1000 RPM in about 1 second and now you have to find a gear TWO gears down and bam, you're going 15 or 20mph slower than you were 3 seconds ago.
It's not the money - it's the wear and tear on the left knee and right shoulder.
The 57 passing 56? Depending on tranny and axle gears, it may be that one truck runs 57 in 11th at 1800 and the other runs 56 at 1900 in 12th - but if the guy going 57 lifts even for a second he's coming down to 10th gear and going 52 at 1950 - and he's not getting that 5 mph back until shortly AFTER he crests the hill.
In a Pete with a 600HP Cat and a Road Ranger 13 I could accelerate up a 6% grade - in first through 7th gear. 7th at 2000 was 35mph. In the Rockies you start up at 70mph, and downshift every mile or two until you're doing about 35 and finally get to a gear where you can pull the grade. The difference between a 500HP Cat and a 600 is how close you are to the top before you hit that speed.
Oh, and cut us off on an upgrade and make us hit the brakes and we're hosed. Scrambling to actually GET the tranny in a gear with enough RPM to get the turbo back is a challenge.
Now, as far as electric trucks - continuous torque from 0 to redline? I'm on it. That's why trains went diesel electric (no tranny to break - gear reduction, but only one "speed". The real problem is WEIGHT = MONEY - the lighter the truck the more I can carry in paying cargo. And with 400 gallons of diesel I can go 2400 miles. Takes two drivers, but PUMPING 400 gallons takes a long time. DOT says the drivers have to stop for rest but pumping fuel cuts into their sleep time (but not their DOT rest time in their log).
Now, either a hybrid truck (diesel electric but like a Prius?) might work. Otherwise they're stuck with plugging in during every driver rest break. How many truck stop charging stations??? And what do the team driver rigs do. They're stopped for 5 minutes while they change drivers. The real required "range" on a truck is 600 miles minimum for single drivers (10 hours) and double that for teams as that's how far they go today without needing fuel (and teams can do that 2 days if they have double tanks).
Can't get rid of the driver untill we have an AI that can pick the best dashcam clips of idiot drivers to post to YouTube.
Samsam
Was behind a big-rig early this week when one of the tires on the trailer went. I was dodging big pieces of rubber on the highway. He was trying to pull over onto the shoulder.
So what happens when there's no driver? Who changes the tire?
For that matter who puts on the chains in California mountains when there's a snow emergency?
If the truck does have to stop, how are the warning triangles/flares deployed?
Who double checks the tie-downs on a flatbed, after the first couple hundred miles?
And a truck that will do 500 miles across the flat of California, or Arizona, will it really do 500 miles through the hills of Tennessee or the mountains of Colorado?
Jay Eimer, thank you -- your description explains a lot.
Logic says "improve road beds, grade crossings, rights-of-way and terminals so trains can travel faster and operate more efficiently - creating better, faster and cheaper long distance hauling - and leave the road web between train terminals to truck "trains" for shorter (<250 miles)hauls."
Per Mr. Elmer's comment (above), it would seem allowing a moderate increase over the current 80K lb limit to accommodate diesel-electric drives, which, if I understand the issue, could be accomplished by increasing the number of axles (I'm assuming much of the 80K limit is per-axle loading of the pavement and the rest is bridge capacity) and establishing "master" and "slave" tractors.
The fact remains, however, that 2-lane roads are beyond horrendously inadequate for truck trains, 4-lane roads equally so, and 6-lanes barely (imagine trying to get to an exit from the left (or center) lane when faced with a mile-long string of truck trains; we frequently encounter shorter versions of that now).
Mr. Elmer's dilemma of limited hours behind the wheel would (largely) disappear with conversion of truck to short haul, rather than cross country, tools.
Next question: when a truck train with 1 master and 4 slave tractors each pulling two 40' trailers arrives at a freight terminal, how will that be handled by today's infrastructure? Follow-on question: What happens when that truck train leaves the interstate and has to get to the freight terminal by 2-lane local roads? Additonal follow-on: How much additional freight handling will be required by the obvious exclusion of truck trains because they're entirely unsuitable for direct truck-to-store deliveries?
Jay Eimer, thank you very much for your excellent description -- and it helps explain why the Samurai always ended up in the middle of semis: it had similar power issues, though on a far smaller scale.
Jay, thanks for that. Very interesting.
Yes, some level of automation is coming and Tesla is already working on an electric rig. As far as truck stops go, we'll find a way to keep getting those fleet dollars. If that takes charging stations, we'll put them in. You may even get to hear my voice thank you for it ;)
Post a Comment