ttrraaffiicc SD60MAC9500 Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less? https://medium.com/@sambokher/what-autonomy-means-for-the-trucking-industry-2c4ccbf6dc8c Automation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.
SD60MAC9500 Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?
https://medium.com/@sambokher/what-autonomy-means-for-the-trucking-industry-2c4ccbf6dc8c
Automation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.
I'm not asking about automation and it's implications. Platooning doesn't have to require AV's. Platooning could happen now, yet it doesn't as there's no cost or speed benefit. Approx 90% of fleets have less than 20 PU's, and the vast majority of these are OTR fleets.. UPS, FedEx, JB HUNT, Schneider, etc. will not be investing in platooning either as the cost to benefit ratio rejects the operation of platooning.. AV's will not take off until battery tech has a breakthrough allowing 500-700 MI range at best with reduced tare weight.
Consolidation will happen that's a given, but not within the next 10-20 years.. One thing you forget to put into perspective is funding shortfalls in USHIS infrastructure. We are billions behind in upgrading the USHIS. Once we catch up in 2050 or later perhaps things will change then..
Erik_Mag ... there still is the question about platooning interfering with other traffic and the highway. One solution is that platooning has to be done on dedicated [ROWs] that are fully supported by direct user fees.
ttrraaffiicc I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.
I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.
While it may be technically feasible, there still is the question about platooning interfering with other traffic and the highway. One solution is that platooning has to be done on dedicates that are fully supported by direct user fees. This is not going to be cheap.
I'm also of the opinion that fully autonomous vehicles are at least a decade away due to issues with sensors under adverse conditions such as driving through slush.
ttrraaffiicc Backshop Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old? I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.
Backshop Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?
Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?
In an earlier one of your threads, I brought up the public inconvenience and hazard of platooning as it interferes with lane traffic. You easily dismissed this by telling me that platooning was largely an outdated concept, and would not play a significant role in this transformation you say is coming. You told me that it was autonomous operation and not platooning that would enable the transformation. You seemed to be saying that platooning was yesterday's news.
ttrraaffiiccAutomation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.
Of course the second half is nonsense, absent some national law restricting Interstates or any extensive amount of secondary or local roads to high-dollar trucks or users possessing high-dollar insurance coverage ... this is possible, but I think highly unlikely to persist even in a perverted democratic system of government. The very large group of independents who finance a truck, team-drive with their spouse until they can't make the note or the runs (or get slammed by one of the legal CDL scams and can't drive) and then peddle the truck to the next victim can only be exacerbated when the trucks cost more, require more careful documented maintenance of highly specialized kinds, and incur more running expenses (likely including dramatically increased road-use fees for o/os and smaller fleets, and a wide variety of cheap-electronics-facilitated tolling charges, both for occupancy and time restrictions).
And of course the range of conventionals, who can happily hook to intermodal TOFC for last mile, but not engage in the brave new world of long-distance point-to-point... but these get lost in crayonista planning.
SD60MAC9500Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?
Platooning is a wonderful thing, and deserves to be mentioned here as 'news'. And it has implications, some complex, for railroads, which are fair topics for open discussion here.
On the other hand, trolling that the technological improvements will destroy railroading entirely within decades becomes tiring as well as very probably mistaken. It largely destroys any point in posting the material on a forum like this in the first place.
Someone decades ago introduced the idea of the 'instant cliche': a new term or concept that almost immediately turns into a reaction of 'groan... not again!' as soon as you see key words. The example back then included 'petrodollars' -- modern ones now include 'platooning', 'autonomous', snd 'electric battery drive'.
If I were Paul Hilal I'd have been actively investing in all these key technologies, as particularly in their present nascent state they're far more useful to rail intermodal than either a threat or a practical 'financeable' full replacement for it. But as has been said, it can be difficult to convince the half-blind to see when they're convinced they have no problems with their vision...
Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?
An "expensive model collector"
A very noteworthy event happened not long ago. The company Locomation successfully completed its first round of trials for its truck platooning technology. Technologies and trials such as this should be on the radar of any railfan as they are they are the harbingers of the end of our hobby. Railroads are facing an existential threat, one which will be nearly impossible to surmount. That threat comes from advanced trucking technologies. These include platooning, autonomy and electrification. Currently, rail competes with road freight with price, being a cheaper, but slower and less reliable option. Even in this role, they perform poorly, having a fairly weak market share, especially in terms of tonnage[1]. So what do railways stand to lose in this coming decade? The short answer is simple: everything. According to the Locomation[2], commercial adoption of platooning can reduce overall costs of trucking by 30%. Currently, intermodal generally has a cost advantage over truckload of about 30%. This is all before decreases on fuel costs from electrification are taken into account. If platooning is adopted, intermodal has no purpose. It is slower and costs the same or even more. There is the arguement that trucks run on public infrastructure, but that is a non-factor aside from being rhetoric from those who are pro rail. The fact that trucking infrastructure is publicly funded hasn't stopped freight from shifting to highway in huge numbers. As it is now, the amount of freight transported on roads is so overwhelming that rail would not be capable of taking enough of a mode share to make a difference. This forum's own Bruce Gillings agrees that roads could handle the freight task currently moved by rail. There are things that railroads could theoretically do to help mitigate the consequences of road autonomy but in the end, there will still be catastrophic loss of volumes leading to irreparable damage to the industry. At the end of the day, a catastrophe is coming, it is just a matter of when. There wasn't anything the canal systems could do about the coming of the railroads in the 1830s. Now the railroads find themselves in a similar situation. Even analyst Anthony Hatch agrees that the situation poses an existential threat[3]. With this all said, this is definitely in line with long term trends. Freight just doesn't move by rail anymore. Boxcar traffic declined. Bulk traffic declined. Now intermodal traffic has reached its peak in 2018 and is falling. All of this is within the context of a growing economy. Railroad are moving to become very niche heavy haul movers in very select and specific locations. Its just the way it is. So what to do? Get your pictures. Times are changing. 10-20 years from now, the world is going to change in ways that will make it unrecognizable. Experience what exists today before it is gone tommorow. [1] https://www.bts.gov/topics/freight-transportation/freight-shipments-mode [2] https://www.truckinginfo.com/10123518/autonomous-convoy-developer-locomation-completes-initial-phase-of-fleet-testing?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=20200814-NL-HDT-HeadlineNews-BOBCD200808028&omdt=NL-HDT-HeadlineNews&omid=1009532351&oly_enc_id=9675B4248456D1T [3] https://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2020/08/18-railroads-have-time-and-money-to-head-off-threats-from-electric-autonomous-trucks
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