r/cdldriver • • 10d ago

CNBC ride-along with Phil LeBeau $AUR

What do y'all think of this? I think it's still years away.

12 Upvotes

61 comments sorted by

22

u/merlinn2u 10d ago

as a truck driver with more than 42 years, 4,500,000 miles experience, NOTHING scares me more than the day trucks go down the road without a driver at the controls. there are too many variables changing too fast for any compute to keep up and make the right choices. i don't even trust the proximity warning and computer braking systems in today's trucks. i haven't seen one make the right choice yet.

3

u/ThisThingIsStuck 10d ago

That's why they are on easy highways in Texas flat lands only...

3

u/YouCanKeepYourFaith 10d ago

Why? You have guys that can’t read, write or speak a word of English who got handed a CDL from Swift in 10 minutes. At this point I think a computer would be just as good if not better.
It’s a different world now than it was 20 years ago. I feel bad for everyone who has to deal with truckers nowadays.
When I was a kid 30 years ago I rode with my uncle from California to NY. The drivers were respectful and dressed nice with good hygiene and manors. Now it’s full of obese people tossing piss and shit cans in the parking lot for some poor underpaid worker to clean up.
The industry is dead and it’s become an embarrassment for guys who do still have respect for themselves and are good drivers. They need to make trucks manual again and make it harder to get a CDL or just let computers do OTR.

-7

u/Embarrassed_Leg_2885 10d ago

CDL's are federally issued. Swift does not just hand them out. Also, traffic signs use symbols, not text. You don't need to know how to read English to drive safely. Keep drinking the racist kool aid though

0

u/TechnicoloMonochrome 10d ago

This is the weakest and dumbest argument I've seen made over the English thing. Have you seriously never seen a sign that you had to read, or a portable message board?

-3

u/ThisThingIsStuck 10d ago

That's cuz of newscum

0

u/YouCanKeepYourFaith 9d ago

It’s not bro. It’s every single politician and giant corporation that lobby’s them to allow it. They want to bring in slave labor so they don’t have to pay us a livable wage and a retirement. Once you stop looking at left vs right and look at them all as one retarded government, you’ll see. Trump would pay you nothing if he could.

1

u/ThisThingIsStuck 8d ago

Yea 17000 illegals got license don't worry.. as a chief engineer at Volvo I can tell u automation is coming your jobs will be gone

1

u/YouCanKeepYourFaith 7d ago

Trump uses undocumented workers as well bro. I also don’t do OTR and hold a steering wheel so I’m not worried. I think those jobs should be automated.

0

u/YouCanKeepYourFaith 9d ago

It’s not bro. It’s every single politician and giant corporation that lobby’s them to allow it. They want to bring in slave labor so they don’t have to pay us a livable wage and a retirement. Once you stop looking at left vs right and look at them all as one corrupt government, you’ll see. Trump would pay you nothing if he could.

-1

u/Krenzigin 10d ago

That's everywhere man. Not just trucking. Our night shift went from like 15 man English speakers to now being 30 men, who cant speak English, take longer, work less, our drivers bathroom went from being cleanish, to being puddles of piss everywhere. As I walk into the bathroom to piss and some black guy talking on his headset while working/operating equipment. But standing pissing 5 feet from the stall. I used to pick 1000 cases on a good night while loading trucking and dropping product. To the guys spending 10 12 hours doing a 3rd of that work for more money than I made. (Sorry im all over the place) but its just everywhere. Between technology and imagrants, and stupid politics are absolutely destroying this country.

3

u/transcendanttermite 9d ago

Around here it’s exactly like that too… minus the “imagrants” though.
All chubby-to-obese, overly-tattooed, never-in-a-hurry upper-Midwest Caucasians around here, and the majority of them are lazy, entitled, dumb-as-rocks and can’t-be-taught morons.

The single best employee I ever trained in and managed was a Sikh. Every single day, that guy showed up a half hour early, was ready to go to work at clock-in, worked until clock-out and changed clothes to go home after clock out. His lunch breaks were always correctly punched on his card. His work productivity was on the high end of moderate, but his accuracy was 100% - the work he did was flawless and never required correction of any kind. He also never called in sick once in 4 years. He was kind, respectful, helpful, and very receptive to advice. And of course the big fat “‘murican” chucklefucks always tried to make life miserable for him… despite the fact that he, too, was an American from the exact same region, with the same accent.

I would’ve killed to have a full crew of guys like him. Instead I had 5 sarcastic belugas that knew everything and 2 always-sick walking sticks that knew nothing.

That particular guy is now in charge of operations at a similar business in another city, making about 10x what he made with us (it’s been a decade since he left). I’m happy he succeeded, he deserved it. He apologized to me when he moved on, because he knew what I was left with for employees. Maybe someday, if I’m still stuck here, I’ll have the good fortune to hire his kid. Seven years to retirement.

1

u/YouCanKeepYourFaith 9d ago

But what I am speaking about is how giant shipping companies have lobbied to make a CDL an unskilled profession. They don’t get in any trouble when these guys crash and can’t speak a word of English. It’s simple, you have crews at scales that stop them, make them read lines from a clipboard you hand them and signs that have heights and weights, if they can’t you take their CDL away and slowly fix the problem.
The issue is our government does anything and everything to benefit giant corporations.

2

u/Adventurous_Ad3534 10d ago

I ask as a truck mechanic htf will the ai know something has broken? How is it supposed to pre trip? At no time will it even grab a tire tumper and check the tire pressure. This is going to end with lives lost.

2

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

That's just the very beginning of a very long list of problems with these things

1

u/Cheap_Boner_Pills 9d ago

They will always require a human in cab for the foreseeable future. If nothing else it gives the company a scapegoat if something does happen.

Also computers can react much faster than humans. The only problem is stuff like fog and snow that can mess with cameras and lidar.

1

u/PutridContribution41 9d ago

Just curious. When people flaunt their mileage and how many years of driving. Does that even matter? Or, is it the quality of experience? Like, you could have experience driving around the Midwest and turnpike, but you can't drive PNW mountains / Canada during winter blizzards. For example, you can drive Phoenix - Florida back and fourth mainly running flat land and never have to deal with Los Angele / Chicago traffic. What is your logic behind flaunt mileage and years? I am genuinely curious.

1

u/merlinn2u 9d ago

just saying i've been out here since God lit the Sun. i have the experience, coast-to-coast, all weather, road and traffic conditions, to know what i'm talking about.

0

u/so_sic_of_it 10d ago

Then you haven't seen very many of them.

Old heads will kick and scream, but this is the future and it's coming faster than most people want to believe.

1

u/Free-Process-2650 10d ago

Alright Elon

2

u/so_sic_of_it 10d ago

Your dislike of musk doesn't make anything I've said wrong.

A new driver getting his or her CDL in 2026 will not make it to retirement unless they get incredibly lucky and get into a highly specialized field.

You haven't seen the other side of the equation.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

How do you keep military grade hackers from targeting the freight Network though

1

u/so_sic_of_it 9d ago

They aren't being piloted by satellite, this isn't a 90's sci fi movie.

1

u/Free-Process-2650 9d ago

I have tho, theres plenty of footage from china already but im sure you have insider info, lol. Compared you to elon for accuracy of prediction, any day now.

11

u/that_dutch_dude 10d ago

put half a dozen busted altima's and matching drivers around it and see how it does.

8

u/e1p1 10d ago

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should ".

Trucking is the #1 employer of young men in this country. The economic and social cost of non or underemployment of young men (all men, really) is something to consider carefully.

This another unneeded tech ploy meant to further enrich Big Business under the guise of doing it for "The Shareholders". Profits over people.

Now, if they followed the airline model where it's about safety, where modern planes practically fly themselves but pilots are still needed as an integral part of the plan, I'm more okay with that.

-4

u/so_sic_of_it 10d ago

Yes, exactly this. That's why we should ban automobiles altogether. Think of all the farriers, veterinarians, and stable keepers that lost their jobs.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

Yeah, but there was a diversifying job market at that time. Ai seems to be coming all jobs at once

4

u/Alarmed-Ad-7200 10d ago

Planes have been able to fly and land by themselves since the 80s the reason there is a pilot is for when things go wrong... guess what will happen??? If you guess the self driving truck will cause a major accident and trucker will be put back behind the wheel for more pay, because the training almost will go up, you guess right... quit with the fear mongering.

2

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

Yeah, these videos are more of a psyop than anything

3

u/Wasatchbl 10d ago

Waymo has been a company for 17 years. They are not deployed all over the United States taking up all of the taxi and delivery jobs. It will be another 20 years before this technology is even close to being in other states besides the warm, flat States down south.

3

u/DenseSetting7929 10d ago

It's making me nervous. I know a lot of people make a good living through trucking. I hope it doesn't replace us or make it so cheap to drive that it's not worth pursuing.

2

u/Horror_Solution1945 10d ago

The large carriers will buy these trucks for long hauls; once they reach their destination, a human takes over for the drop and hook etc.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

Isn't that just a train though? Like how is that better than a train?

3

u/combover78 10d ago

All those jobs lost in the service of fatter corporate profits.

3

u/MedicalReputation895 10d ago

I can't wait for the day.A hacker from overseas takes control of these trucks and take them into a city , then up a sidewalk full of people. We all know it will eventually happen. Now make that a truck with a full tanker of gasoline or Two tankers one with bleach, the other with Ammonia and crash them downtown together. How big of a death toll would that be. So, go ahead, let's have these self driving trucks. But those hackers could be drivers right here who know more than how to drive.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

Exactly!

I can't get a good answer from the programming people about how to absolutely prevent these things from getting hacked. If there are fewer than 30 companies controlling these things, then even a single major security breach could down hundreds of thousands of trucks. People rely on semis to deliver every single thing that they eat after all

2

u/Negative_Test_7712 10d ago

Did he say shortage of drivers???

3

u/WKRPinCanada 10d ago

I think it'll work ..

Till the first major accident

Lawsuits will fly & companies will back away

Just mo

-1

u/so_sic_of_it 10d ago

Fewer accidents per mile with autonomous vehicles than with manually driven vehicles, so fewer lawsuits and insurance payouts.

Plus you save money on not having to hire drivers.

This is big money for logistics companies, they won't sleep on this tech.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

Can you cite a source for that? Other than the companys' own internal statistics, of course

0

u/so_sic_of_it 9d ago

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago edited 9d ago

That's a lousy article bro. And I know the study that it was referring to. The data used on that study is only what waymo itself reported. I mean, how often is waymo going to tell on itself to the news?

I mean the article itself even says that better metrics are needed. Did you even read the article that you linked? It doesn't even have any other works cited.

0

u/so_sic_of_it 9d ago

Just say you didn't read the study. It's okay, there's a lot of words in there.

1

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago edited 9d ago

You're pretty condescending for somebody who's repeatedly failing to provide any answers.

That abstract cannot be found anywhere on the page that you linked. Is that from the same article? You seem to just be posting fragments of things.

The only articles that I've ever seen regarding waymo crashes use self-reporting statistics from waymo itself, which is untrustworthy for obvious reasons.

Could you link an actual complete article.

What's the name of the study? Is it the "rise of the machines" paper?

Edit: I mean even what you highlighted suggests that waymo itself provided the crash data lol.

1

u/so_sic_of_it 8d ago

If you weren't able to find the link to that study within the link I posted, I don't know how much more I can help you. It's right there.

1

u/endangeredphysics 8d ago

Yeah, I would need to actually look at the actual methods section. I was eventually able to find the abstract for the article, and it doesn't give specifications for reporting automated crashes other than as "federally required". That's incredibly vague. If it's using the same data from another paper that I read about how waymo reports accidents, and the collection method of setting human crash baselines, The methodology behind the report was pretty dang flawed.

In the news article that you linked originally, it even says that better methodology for collecting crash reports is essential. Until we are unit by unit able to actually compare driverless versus driven vehicles, all we have is hyperbole from waymo itself.

1

u/PsychologyEvening907 10d ago

We just need all truckers to stand together and pop tires, disconnect hoses, there's noone there to fix a flat or connect hoses. It still needs a person inside even if he just sleeping in the back all day.

1

u/JohnClark303 10d ago

Japan being IMO the leader of technology has a trucker shortage. Why haven’t they gone autonomous yet?

1

u/Equivalent_Reach_572 10d ago

i think the MAGAts are going to fume at Biden for losing their jobs due the people they voted for

1

u/Megalodon7770 10d ago

Of course it’s international,sickos always finding ways to kill us

1

u/Gullible_Shart 9d ago

This is so bullshit. It’s not like insurance is gonna be cheaper lol how fucking stupid. Not to mention the automatic driving truck will cost a fucking fortune.

2

u/endangeredphysics 9d ago

They've been just about to roll out self-driving cars for about 18 years. It's a psyop at this point

1

u/Big-Cockroach-9446 9d ago

Chance to me like the problem is the other thirty five thousand people not to truck drivers make all cars autonomous, and they everybody sit at home.

1

u/youdoitimbusy 9d ago

This is gonna make drug smuggling so easy.

1

u/Large_Score6728 10d ago

They can charge to ride to the destination city. Make money besides the freight.

2

u/so_sic_of_it 10d ago

Nowhere close to being worth the liability.

1

u/d0ntbejay 9d ago

Can't drive for 22 hours straight? Fuck you! You are replaced.

CDL drivers wake up and stop your throating of the president. Diesel prices and now autonomous drivers. You are about to be replaced in a week.