The next job category to be annihilated by technology
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Farm tractors are already auto-steer. My oldest brother who runs my Mom's farm just paid $30,000 each to have AS installed on 4 of our older tractors he was so impressed by it. The farmer still sits in the seat but otherwise the tractor drives itself. For planting corn and beans it's beyond belief how well it works. The rows are perfect.
This technology is coming, there is no stopping it. The insurance industry will make it prohibitive to have a human driver behind the wheel soon because these computers don't make mistakes.
Google cars are coming soon as well. You will pay a monthly fee for your car service and a Google car will be at your door when you request it, drop you off at your location and then go do another job.
It will revolutionize transportation.
If there's an opportunity that would allow "self-driving" vehicles of any type to demonstrate adaptability to the "real world", this one probably comes closest; farm fields are usually level and sometimes a perfect square, but there remains a possibility of disruption from animals (and their burrows), gullies, large rocks, etc. And the property would undoubtedly have to be securely fenced, since if someone's child wanders into the path of a self-driven tractor, big bad agri-business, rather than irresponsible parenting, will be the target of a lawsuit.
Still, along with the easier adaptability of very large trucks to a limited amount of Intestate highway mileage, this is an instance both limited enough in scope and big enough in terms of potential savings.
And the FAA already said (after that 60 minutes story) that it will not allow drones being used for deliveries.
"Progress" is coming, and the FAA will and is adapting to it, it's only a matter of when. From the FAA website:
Fact—In the 2012 FAA reauthorization legislation, Congress told the FAA to come up with a plan for “safe integration” of UAS by September 30, 2015. Safe integration will be incremental. The agency is still developing regulations, policies and standards that will cover a wide variety of UAS users, and expects to publish a proposed rule for small UAS – under about 55 pounds – later this year. That proposed rule will likely include provisions for commercial operations.
Myth #6:The FAA is lagging behind other countries in approving commercial drones. Fact – This comparison is flawed. The United States has the busiest, most complex airspace in the world, including many general aviation aircraft that we must consider when planning UAS integration, because those same airplanes and small UAS may occupy the same airspace.
Developing all the rules and standards we need is a very complex task, and we want to make sure we get it right the first time. We want to strike the right balance of requirements for UAS to help foster growth in an emerging industry with a wide range of potential uses, but also keep all airspace users and people on the ground safe.
Myth #7: The FAA predicts as many as 30,000 drones by 2030. Fact—That figure is outdated. It was an estimate in the FAA’s 2011 Aerospace Forecast. Since then, the agency has refined its prediction to focus on the area of greatest expected growth. The FAA currently estimates as many as 7,500 small commercial UAS may be in use by 2018, assuming the necessary regulations are in place. The number may be updated when the agency publishes the proposed rule on small UAS later this year. @FAANews
While those myths might be good and all you have to consider a few things with drones.
1) If a building is large enough as long as there is a roof there might not be a real need for FAA clearance. If the NFL has a domed stadium and wants to test a drone that can pick up and drop a football they can do that. Just like a drivers license is required on federal, state and local roads, not private.
2) The applications and demand are so large eventually some might work with academia to do it anyway. I met a friend the other day that started a job at a insurance company. They want drones to survey damage to get reports faster. Say a roof might cave in. Now do you contract a contractor and wait, ask the customer to risk their life to photo it or call up the drone to take photos? In fire fighting drones could help fight fires by determining with an eye in the sky where people might be trapped, where fires are starting, where fires are going etc. It could also be combined with GIS technology to predict drought
There are just too many applications with safety alone that could save quite a bit of funds.
A semi ith a 53" trailer is a rolling weapon. Right now semi trucks that look a normal truck are hauling missiles and warheads and radioactive material. Would you trust a unmanned remote controlled truck hauling stuff like this. Everyday trucks carrying bombs and nuclear waste are on the road with us, you ride past them every day and don't even know it. They have to ship this way to keep them safe Hell half the time the drivers don't even know what they are carrying. They are given dummy shipping papers. Everything is hauled by truck.
While that is true you have to consider that rail also moves things.
CSX is at all time highs going back to 1980, Norfolk southern is pretty much doing just as well and Union Pacific all the way back to 1978 Easily probably the best performing industry in the country.
A cargo ship can be unloaded onto a rail car and shipped to quite a bit of the country. Yes trucks can do the same but rail has right of way and the cost structure is lower for the most part
For passengers people think of Amtrak and how it loses money hand over fist. Rail also is known mostly in the northeast but in terms of commercial it's all over the place, even in the south.
I'm not saying that rail totally replaces trucking but the idea that someone comes into the port of LA and has to be manually shipped by truck to NYC probably is not going to happen as often as you think. The boom of oil in midwest also also increased demand for rail as now there's more shipped out of North Dakota by rail then the Alaskan pipeline!
While that is true you have to consider that rail also moves things.
CSX is at all time highs going back to 1980, Norfolk southern is pretty much doing just as well and Union Pacific all the way back to 1978 Easily probably the best performing industry in the country.
A cargo ship can be unloaded onto a rail car and shipped to quite a bit of the country. Yes trucks can do the same but rail has right of way and the cost structure is lower for the most part
For passengers people think of Amtrak and how it loses money hand over fist. Rail also is known mostly in the northeast but in terms of commercial it's all over the place, even in the south.
I'm not saying that rail totally replaces trucking but the idea that someone comes into the port of LA and has to be manually shipped by truck to NYC probably is not going to happen as often as you think. The boom of oil in midwest also also increased demand for rail as now there's more shipped out of North Dakota by rail then the Alaskan pipeline!
Yes rail moves to but rail cannot deliver to your local grocery store, or deliver your car to the dealer. Trains and semi's work hand in hand. Trains deliver to local intermodal or yard unloaded on to trucks, just like container ships. Container ships are unloaded onto semi trucks. You look at Chicago thy have some of the largest rail and semi truck terminals in the country. Trains have there limits were they can deliver. But semi trucks can go anywhere. So semi trucks deliver America. If it came by train or ship than good chances a truck delivered it to its final destination . Like you said trains going o NYC from La, but when in ny picked up by trucks to take contents to their customers. Have you seen those containers on trains, they came from cargo ships and those containers are set on special truck frame for semi. Triple crown trucking company have trailers with rr wheels on them to be towed by trains.
Last edited by Vannort54; 07-11-2014 at 11:58 AM..
Yes rail moves to but rail cannot deliver to your local grocery store, or deliver your car to the dealer. Trains and semi's work hand in hand. Trains deliver to local intermodal or yard unloaded on to trucks, just like container ships. Container ships are unloaded onto semi trucks. You look at Chicago thy have some of the largest rail and semi truck terminals in the country. Trains have there limits were they can deliver. But semi trucks can go anywhere. So semi trucks deliver America. If it came by train or ship than good chances a truck delivered it to its final destination . Like you said trains going o NYC from La, but when in ny picked up by trucks to take contents to their customers. Have you seen those containers on trains, they came from cargo ships and those containers are set on special truck frame for semi. Triple crown trucking company have trailers with rr wheels on them to be towed by trains.
True but what I'm getting at is the point a to point b is not going to be all truck. Semi trucks cannot go everywhere. There's streets around the New England area that specifically say "No trucks on Sundays". As part of retail we learned the hard way that if someone had that on their street they'd get in trouble with the sheriff really fast if they tried. There are also a fair amount of remote areas that are beyond major highways and rail that make it pretty slow to receive goods and services. Drones could bridge some of that gap.
One thing to look at in the middle of all this is dockworkers. If they go on strike ships have to go to a different port everything has to be rerouted, regardless by rail or truck. There's been arguments that the lower ice level is going to make it possible to ship from asia to the east coast and europe to the west coast.
True but what I'm getting at is the point a to point b is not going to be all truck. Semi trucks cannot go everywhere. There's streets around the New England area that specifically say "No trucks on Sundays". As part of retail we learned the hard way that if someone had that on their street they'd get in trouble with the sheriff really fast if they tried. There are also a fair amount of remote areas that are beyond major highways and rail that make it pretty slow to receive goods and services. Drones could bridge some of that gap.
One thing to look at in the middle of all this is dockworkers. If they go on strike ships have to go to a different port everything has to be rerouted, regardless by rail or truck. There's been arguments that the lower ice level is going to make it possible to ship from asia to the east coast and europe to the west coast.
You still need trucks to get the containers to the storage yards or to the train yards. All those containers are made to be hauled by semi trucks. I know from personal experience because my brother was a owner operator of 5 steel hauling semi trucks. He picked up coils of steel from freighters docked in the Detroit river. The steel was in the hull of the ship. He had to deliver it to the stamping plants of the big3 automakers. Also trucks deliver all the gas to your local gas stations. So all three rely each other to move freight. But a semi is the one that makes it get to the consumer.
While that is true you have to consider that rail also moves things.
CSX is at all time highs going back to 1980, Norfolk southern is pretty much doing just as well and Union Pacific all the way back to 1978 Easily probably the best performing industry in the country.
A cargo ship can be unloaded onto a rail car and shipped to quite a bit of the country. Yes trucks can do the same but rail has right of way and the cost structure is lower for the most part
For passengers people think of Amtrak and how it loses money hand over fist. Rail also is known mostly in the northeast but in terms of commercial it's all over the place, even in the south.
I'm not saying that rail totally replaces trucking but the idea that someone comes into the port of LA and has to be manually shipped by truck to NYC probably is not going to happen as often as you think. The boom of oil in midwest also also increased demand for rail as now there's more shipped out of North Dakota by rail then the Alaskan pipeline!
I've been a railroad buff all my life, and it delighted me to see the industry recover after so many stagnant years while I was growing up (and for ten more years after that, FWIW). But it's important to understand that what moves by rail today is very, very different from the mix of freight hauled when the nation's rail system was a near-monopoly, up until the close of World war II.
The major carriers are very close-mouthed about what freight actually moves, or did in an earlier day. Statistics are collected, but lumped into totals which make it difficult to get a true picture. But ironically, one of the most detailed pictures I'm aware of is found in Rails to Penn State by Michael Bezilla, a start-to-finish portrait of the Bellefonte Central, which generated most of its revenue from iron mines and limestone quarries and processors in its namesake town, but also meandered 18 miles through the countryside to the fringes of the Penn State campus.
A portrait of the line during its heydey in the 1930's and 40's shows a mix of traffic consistent with a developing, industrializing, increasingly consumer-oriented society. Coal for the university's heating plant, mined only about 35 miles away, was the largest item, but the mix also included cement, lumber, brick, structural steel (all for construction), grain to, and sometimes from feed dealers, fertilizer, foodstuffs and supplies for the university's dining halls and dormitories, gasoline and heating oil from refineries in Philadelphia, furniture (mostly classroom-related, but a few carloads for local merchants), and new automobiles and farm machinery. Even two carloads of beef cattle intended for an experimental program at the College of Agriculture moved by rail. And many smaller shipments were handled -- either as package express, in mixed carloads at LCL (Less than CarLoad) pricing.
But virtually all of this traffic had been lost to the flexibility and stability (guaranteed, or at least accurate, delivery practices) of highway carriers by the late 1960's. The completion of the Interstate Highway System put the final nail into the coffin of "ubiquity railroading".
What was left moved in larger quantities (100 tons per car vs. 50-70 twenty years before) and the cost of building and maintaining rail spurs plus pickup and delivery under strict union work rules (spotting a single car could generate direct costs of several hundred dollars) meant that the rail carriers were only interested in high-volume business -- several cars a week as the minimum. To concentrate business, commodities like flour were sometimes shipped in bulk -- then delivered by truck to smaller-volume customers. Some perishable business that had been lost in the 50s-70's came back, but in trailers on flat cars. And the last high-volume movement of livestock in America -- hogs from a consolidation point across the Missouri from Omaha to Farmer John's packing plant just east of Los Angeles -- died out in the early Eighties. By far, the huge volume of containerized merchandise imported from Asia and shipped to points east by rail, was the biggest factor in the industry's turn-around post-1985.
At this point, virtually the entire industry (down to seven major players in North America) is "waiting for the shoe to drop" regarding PANAMAX - the widening and deepening of the Panama Canal, expected to be completed some time in 2015, The effects will take a number of years to be felt, as many of the East Coast ports, including Greater New York's Port Elizabeth and Port Newark, simply aren't deep enough. Railroads need a fairly long haul, perhaps 300-400 miles inland, to generate significant cost savings vs. trucking as well. But they will likely find some excess capacity on lines with signal and dispatching systems that have been substantially improved, and that raises the possibility for what was once marketed, unsuccessfully --over 40 years ago -- as "Bee-Line Service"; direct siding-to-siding movement of a smaller number of cars in a single "dedicated" train.
The picture is about to change again, as it has since the technology emerged, and will for as long as that technology holds an efficiency advantage; just not for all freight to and from all points.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 07-11-2014 at 06:28 PM..
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@FAANews
Easily probably the best performing industry in the country.
