Steve Viscelli: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream | Lex Fridman Podcast #237

the following is a conversation with. steve vaseli formerly a truck driver and. now a sociologist at the university of. pennsylvania who studies freight. transportation. his first book the big rig. trucking in the decline of the american. dream explains how long-haul trucking. went from being one of the best blue. collar jobs to one of the toughest. his current ongoing book project. driverless autonomous trucks and the. future of the american trucker explores. self-driving trucks and their potential.

impacts on labor and on society. this is the lex friedman podcast to. support it please check out our sponsors. in the description and now. here's my conversation with steve. leselli. you wrote a book about trucking called. the big rig trucking and the decline of. the american dream and. you're currently working on a book about. autonomous trucking called driverless. autonomous trucks and the future of the. american trucker.

i have to bring up some johnny cash to. you because i was just listening to this. song he has a ton of songs about. trucking but one of them i was just. listening to. it's called all i do is drive. where he's talking to an old truck. driver it goes. i asked him if those trucking songs tell. about a life like his. he said. if you want to know the truth about it. here's the way it is. all i do is drive drive drive. try to stay alive that's the course. and keep my mind on my load keep my eye.

upon the road i got nothing in common. with any man. who's home every day at five all i do is. drive drive drive. drive drive drive drive so i got to ask. you uh same thing that he asked the. trucker. you worked as a trucker for six months. in in uh while working on the previous. book. um. what's it like to be a truck driver. i think that captures it. it really does. um can you take me through the whole.

experience. what it takes to uh become a trucker. what actual day-to-day life was on day. one week one and then over time how that. changed. yeah. well the book is really about how that. changed over time. so my experience and i'm an ethnographer. right so i go in. uh i live with people i work with people. i talk to them i try to understand. you know their world. ethnographer by the way. what is that the science and art of.

capturing a uh. the spirit of a people. yeah life ways you know i think that. would be a good way to capture it you. know try to understand. what makes them unique um. as a as a society maybe as a subculture. right what. makes them tick that might be different. than the way you and i are. sort of wired. and to really sort of thickly describe. it would be at least one component of it. that's sort of the basic essential and.

then. for me i want to you know exercise what. c wright mills called the sociological. imagination. which is to you know put that individual. biography. into the long historical sweep of. humanity if at all possible. my goals are typically more modest than. sea right mills is and to you know then. put that biography in. the larger social structure right to try. to understand.

that person's life and the way they see. the world um their decisions in light of. their interests relative to others and. conflict and power and all these things. that i find interesting in the context. of society and in the context of history. yeah and a small tangent what does it. take to do that. to uh capture. the uh this particular group the spirit. the music. the full landscape of experiences that a. particular group. goes through in the context of. everything else you only have limited.

amount of time and you come to the table. probably with. preconceived notions that are then. quickly destroyed all that whole process. so it's i don't know if it's more art or. science but what does it take to be. great at this. i do think the my first book was. a success as you know relative to my. goals. of trying to really you know get at the. heart of of sort of the central issues. and and the lives being led by people if. i. have a a resource a talent it's that i'm.

a good listener um. i can. you know. talk with anybody. you know my wife's you know loves to. remark on this that you know i can i can. sort of sit down with anyone. uh i think i learned that from my dad. who uh worked at a factory and actually. had a lot of truckers go through the. gate that he operated. and he always had a story you know a. joke for everybody kind of got to know. everyone individually and he just you.

know taught me that like. essentially everyone has something to. teach you. and i try to embody that like that's. that's the rule is for me is. every single person i interact with can. teach me something. i gotta ask you i'm sorry to interrupt. because i'm clearly of the two of us the. poorer listener. uh you i think you're a great listener. i've i've been listening to the podcast. i think you're a great listener i really. appreciate that. um you've done a large number of. interviews like you said of truckers for.

this book. so i'm just curious um. what are some lessons you've learned. about what it takes to. listen to a person. enough maybe guide you know the. conversation enough to get to the core. of the person the idea again the. ethnographer. goal to get to the get to the core. yeah. i i think. it's it doesn't happen in the moment. right so. i.

i'm a ruminator you know i i just sit. with the data. you know for years i i sat with the. trucking data for almost 10 full years. and just thought it thought about the. problems and the questions. using everything that i possibly could. and so in the moment you know my ideal. interview is. you know. i open up and i say tell me about your. life as a trucker and they never shut up. and they and they keep telling me the. things that i'm interested in no it.

never. works out that way because they don't. know what you're interested in right and. so it's um a lot of it is the. as you know as a i think you're a great. interviewer you know prep right i mean. so you try to get to know a little bit. about the person and sort of understand. you know kind of the the central. questions you're interested in that that. they can help you explore. um and so. i've done hundreds of interviews with. truck drivers um at this point and. i i should really go back and read the.

original ones they're probably terrible. what's the process like you're sitting. down do you have an audio recorder and. also taking notes or do you do no audio. records just notes or yeah audio. recorder and you know social scientists. always have to struggle with sampling. right like who do you interview where do. you find them how do you recruit them. i just happen to have a sort of. natural place to go that gave me. essentially the population that i was. interested in you know so all these. long-haul truck drivers that i i was. interested in they have to stop and get. fuel and get services at truck stops.

so i picked a you know truck stop. at the juncture of a couple major. interstates. went into the lounge that drivers have. to walk through you know with my. clipboard. and everybody who came through and i. said hey you know are you on break. and that was sort of the first. you know criteria was do you have time. right um and if they said yes i said you. know i'd say i'm a graduate student you. know at indiana university i'm doing a. study i'm trying to understand more.

about truck drivers you know will you. sit down with me and i think the first i. think i probably asked like 104 103. people. to get the first 100 interviews. that's pretty good odds it's amazing. right. for you know any response rate like that. for inter i mean these are people who. sat down and gave me. an hour sometimes more of their time. just randomly at a truck stop and it. just tells you something about like. truckers have something to say. they're alone a lot.

and so. i had to figure out how to kind of turn. the spigot on you know. and. i got pretty good at it i think yeah. so they have good stories to tell and. they have an active life of the mind. because they spend so much time on the. road just basically thinking. yeah there's a there's a lot of. reflection. um a lot of struggles you know and it's. they take different forms you know uh. one of the things that they talk about. is the impact on their families. they say truckers have the same rate of. divorce as everybody else and that's.

because trucking saves so many marriages. because you're not around and ruins so. many and so yeah it ends up being awash. so. you know i had this experience um i met. another person he recognized me from a. podcast. and he said you know i'm a fan of yours. and a fan of joe rogan. but you guys never talk you always talk. to people know about prizes you always. talk to these kind of people you never. talk to. us regular folk.

and uh that guy really stuck with me. first of all the idea of regular folk is. a silly notion i think people that win. nobel prizes are often more boring than. the people these regular folks in terms. of stories in terms of richness of. experience in terms of the ups and downs. of life. and uh. you know that really stuck with me. because i i set that as a goal for. myself to make sure i. i talk to regular folk. and you did just this talking again.

regular folk. it's human beings. um. all of them have experiences. if you were to recommend. uh to talk to uh to talk some of these. folks with stories how would you find. them yeah so i i do do this sometimes. for journalists who you know will come. and they want to write about sort of. what's happening right now in trucking. you know um. and i send them to truck stops you know. i say you know. yeah there's a town called effingham.

illinois. and it's just this place where you know. a bunch of huge truck stops tons of. trucks and really nothing else. out there you know it's in the middle of. corn country um and you know again. truckers in this. you know sadly i think you know the. politics of the day. it's changing a little bit. i think there's a little the. polarization is getting. to the trucking industry and in ways. that um you know maybe we're seeing in. other parts of of our.

social world. but truckers are generally you know real. open sort of friendly folks. some of them ultimately like to work. alone and be alone that's a relatively. small subset i think um but all of them. are generally you know kind of open you. know trusting. willing to have a conversation and so. you go to the truck stop and. you go in the lounge and and they're. usually there's usually a booth down. there and somebody's sitting at their. laptop or on their phone.

um and willing to strike up a. conversation you should try that you. should. 100 we'll try this uh. just again we're just going from tangent. to tangent we've returned to the main. question but. what do they listen to. do they listen to talk radio. did they listen to podcast audio books. do they listen to music do they listen. to silence. everything everything everything some i. mean. and some still listen to the cb which. you know it's a it's an ever-dwindling. group um they'll call it the original.

internet citizen's band you know they. they back in the 70s they thought it was. going to be the. the medium of democracy um and they love. to just get on there and you know cruise. along uh one truck after the other and. chat away usually it's guys who know. each other from the same company or. happen to run into each other but other. than that it's everything under the sun. um you know and and that's it's probably. one of the stereotypes and it's i think. it was more true in the past um you know. about the sort of heterogeneity of truck.

drivers. um they're a really diverse group now. you know there's definitely. a large. still a large component of rural white. guys who work in the industry. but there's a huge growing. chunk of the industry that's that's. immigrants. people of color. and even some women still huge barriers. to women women entering it but it's a. much more diverse place than than most. people think. so let's return to your journey as a. truck driver.

what uh what did it take to become a. truck driver what were the early days. like yeah so this is i mean this is a. central part of the story right that i. uncovered. and the the good part was that i went in. without knowing what was going to happen. so i i was able to experience it. as a new truck driver would is one of. the important stories in the book is how. that experience is constructed by. employers to sort of you know help you. think the way that they would like you. to think about the job and about the.

industry and about the social relations. of it. um it's super intimidating uh. i say in the book you know pretty handy. guy you know familiar with tools. machines like you know comfortable. operating stuff like from from time i. was a kid. the truck was just like a whole other. experience i mean as as i think most. people think about it it's this big huge. vehicle right it's it's really long it's. 70 feet long it can weigh 80 000 pounds.

you know it does not stop like a car it. does not turn like a car um. but at least when i. started um and this this is changing. it's part of the technology story of. trucking. the first thing you had to do was learn. how to shift it. and. it doesn't shift. like a manual car the clutch isn't. synchronized so you have to do what's. called double clutch. and it's it's basically the foundational. skill that a truck driver used to have. to learn. so you would you know accelerate say.

you're in first gear. you push in the clutch you pull the. shifter out of first gear you let the. clutch out and then you let the rpms of. the engine drop. an exact amount then you put push the. clutch back in and you put it in second. gear. if your timing is off those gears aren't. going to go together and so. if you're in an intersection you're just. going to get this horrible grinding. sound as you coast you know to a dead. stop in the you know underneath the.

stoplight or whatever it is so the first. thing you have to do is learn to shift. it and so. at least for me and a lot of drivers who. are going to. private companies cdl schools what. happens is it's kind of like a boot camp. they ship me three states away from home. send you a bus ticket and say hey we'll. put you up for two weeks you sit in a. classroom you sort of learn the theory. of shifting. the you know theory of kind of how you. fill out your logbook. rules of the road.

you know you do that maybe half the day. and then the other half you're in this. giant parking lot with one of these old. trucks and just like you know destroying. what's left of the thing you know just. and it's lurching and belching smoke and. just making horrible noises and like. rattling i mean in these things like. there's a lot of torque. and so if you do manage to get it into. gear but the engine's lugging i mean it. can throw you right out of the seat. right so it's this it's like you know. this bull you're trying to ride and it's. super intimidating um and the thing.

about it is that for everybody there. it's. almost everybody there it's super high. stakes. so trucking has become a job of last. resort for a lot of people. and so they you know they lose a job. in manufacturing they. they get too old to do construction any. longer right the knees can no longer. handle it um. they get replaced by a machine their job. gets you know offshored and they end up. going to trucking because. it's a place where they can maintain.

their income and so. it's super high stress like they've left. their family behind maybe they quit. another job. they're typically being charged a lot of. money so that first couple weeks like. you might get charged eight thousand. dollars by the company that you have to. pay back if you don't get hired. and so the stakes are high and this. machine is huge and it's intimidating. and so it's super stressful i mean i. watched you know men grown men break. down crying about like how they couldn't. go home and. tell their son that they'd been telling.

they were gonna you know go become a. long-haul truck driver that they'd. failed and it's kind of this super high. stress system it's designed that way. partly because as one of my trainers. later told me it's basically a two-week. job interview. like they're testing you they're seeing. like you know how's this person going to. respond when it's tough you know when. they have to do the right thing and it's. slow. and you know they need to learn. something are they going to rush. you know or are they going to kind of. stay calm figure it out you know nose to.

the grindstone because when you're in. your truck driver you're unsupervised. you know and that's what they're really. looking for is that kind of. quality of conscientious work. that's going to carry through to the job. the truck is such an imposing part of a. traffic scenario yeah so you said like. like turning it it stresses me out every. time i look at a truck because they i. mean the geometry of the problem is so. tricky. and so if you combine the fact that they. have to like everybody basically all the. cars in the scene are staring at the. truck and they're waiting often in.

frustration. yeah and in that mode you have to then. shift gears. perfectly and move perfectly and if when. you're new especially. like you'll probably for somebody like. me it feels like it would take years to. become calm and comfortable in that. situation as opposed to be exceptionally. stressed under under the eyes of the. the road everybody looking at you. waiting for you is that the. psychological. pressure of that is that something that. was really difficult yeah absolutely.

again just i i saw people freeze up you. know in that intersection as you know. horns are blaring and the trucks. grinding you know gears and you just. can't you know and they just shut down. they're like this isn't for me i can't. do it um you're right it takes years. if you know trucking is not considered a. skilled occupation. but you know my six months there and i i. was a pretty good rookie but when i. finished i was i was still a rookie even. shifting definitely backing. um tight corners and situations you know.

i could drive competently. but the difference between me and. someone who had you know two three years. of experience um was. a it was a giant gulf between us and. between that and the really skilled. drivers who've been doing it for 20. years um you know is still another step. beyond that so it is highly skilled. would it be fair to break trucking into. the task of truck of driving a truck to. two categories one is like the local. stuff getting out of the parking lot.

getting into getting into you know. driving down local streets and then. highway driving those two. those two tasks. what are the challenges associated with. each task you kind of emphasize the. first one uh what about the actual like. long haul. highway driving yeah so i mean they are. very different right um and and the the. key with the long-haul driving is really. a set of um the way i i came to. understand it was.

a set of habits right um we have a sense. of driving particularly men i think have. a sense of driving as like. being really skilled is like the goal. and you you can kind of maneuver. yourself out of in and out of tight. spaces with great speed and breaking and. acceleration you know um for a really. good truck driver it's about. understanding traffic. and traffic patterns and making good. decisions so you never have to use those. skills.

and the really good drivers. you know the the mantra is always leave. yourself an out. right so always have that safe place. that you can put that truck in case that. four-wheeler in front of you who's. texting loses control. um you know what are you going to do. in that in that situation and. what. really good truck drivers do on the. highway. is they just keep themselves out of. those situations entirely. they see it they slow down they you know.

they avoid it. um and then the local driving is is. really something that takes just. practice and routine to learn you know. this quarter turn it feels like the back. of the truck sometimes is on sometimes. it's on delay when you're backing it up. so it's like all right i'm going to do a. quarter turn of the wheel now. and to get the effect that i want like. five seconds from now and where that. tail of that trailer is going to be and. there's just no i mean some people have. a natural talent for that you know.

spatial visualization and kind of. calculating those angles and everything. but there's really no escaping the fact. that you've gotta just do it over and. over again before you're gonna learn how. to do it well. do you mind sharing how much you were uh. getting paid how much you were making as. a truck driver in your time as a truck. driver yeah i started out at 25 cents a. mile. uh and then i got bumped up to 26 cents. a mile so um. we had a minimum.

pay which was sort of a new. pay scheme that the industry had started. to introduce. to you know because there's there's lots. of unpaid work and time. and so we had a minimum pay of 500 a. week that you would you would get if you. didn't drive enough miles to exceed that. um you get paid in sort of. so you get paid when you turn the bills. in which are which is the paperwork that. goes with the load so you know you have. to get that back to your company and. then that's how they build a customer.

and so you might get a bunch of those. bills that kind of bunch up in one week. so you know i might get a paycheck for. you know 1200 and i mean i was a poor. graduate student so this was real real. money to me um and so i i i had this. sort of natural incentive to you know. earn a lot uh or to maximize my pay. some weeks were that minimum 500 very. few. and then some i'd get 1200 1300 bucks. pay has gone up.

you know typical drivers now starting in. the 30s you know in the kind of job that. i was in uh 30s you know cents per mile. 30 to 35. so can we can we try to reverse engineer. that math how that maps the actual hours. so there's the hours connected to. driving are so. widely dispersed as you said some of. them don't count as actual work some of. it does that's a very interesting. discussion that we'll then continue when. we start talking about autonomous. trucking. but uh. you know you're saying all these cents.

per mile kind of thing what. uh how does that map to like hourly. average hourly wage. yeah so i mean and this is kind of the. this is also an interesting technology. story in the end and it's the technology. story that didn't happen um so pay per. mile was you know invented by companies. when you couldn't surveil drivers you. didn't know what they were doing right. and you wanted them to have some skin in. the game. and so you'd say you know here's the. load it's going from. you know for me i might start in you.

know the northeast maybe in upstate new. york with a load of beer. and say here's this load of beer bring. it to this address in michigan we're. going to pay you by the mile right if i. was being paid by the hour i might just. pull over at the diner and have. breakfast. so. you're paid by the mile uh but. increasingly. over time. the. the typical driver is spending more and. more time doing non-driving tasks lots. of reasons for that.

one of which is railroads captured a lot. of freight that goes long distances now. another one is traffic congest. congestion um and the other one is that. drivers are pretty cheap and they're. they're almost always the low people on. the totem pole in some segments. and so their time is used really. inefficiently um so i might go to that. brewery to pick up that load of of bud. light. and you know their doc staff may may be. busy. loading up five other trucks and they'll.

say you know go over there and sit and. wait we'll we'll call you on the cb when. the dock's ready so you wait there a. couple hours. they bring you in you know you never. know what's happening in the truck. sometimes they're loading it with a. forklift maybe they're throwing 14. pallets on there full of kegs but. sometimes it'll take them hours. you know and you're sitting in that. truck and you're you're essentially. unpaid. you know. then you pull out you've got control. over what you're gonna get paid based on. how you drive that load um and then on.

the other end. you got a similar situation of kind of. waiting so so if that's the way truck. drivers are paid then there's a low. incentive for the optimization of the. supply chain to make them more efficient. right to uh to utilize truck labor more. efficiently. absolutely. and so that's the technology uh problem. that uh one of several technology. problems that could be. addressed um. i mean. what so what did uh.

if we just linger on it what are we. talking about in terms of. uh dollars per hour is it close to. minimum wage is it you know there's. something you talk about there was a. uh. a conception or a misconception. that uh truckers get paid a lot. for their work do they get paid a lot. for their work. some do. uh and i think that's. part of the complexity so you know what. interested me as an ethnographer about. this was you know i'm interested in the.

kind of economic conceptions that people. have in their heads and and how they. lead to certain decisions in labor. markets you know why some people become. an entrepreneur and and other people. become a wage laborer or you know why. some people want to be doctors and other. people want to be truck drivers. that conception right is is getting. shaped in these labor markets is the. argument of of the book. and. the fact that drivers can hear or. potential drivers can hear about these. you know workers who make a hundred.

thousand dollars plus which which. happens regularly in the trucking. industry there are. many truck drivers who make more than a. hundred thousand dollars a year um you. know is an attraction but the industry's. highly segmented um and and so. the entry level segment and and we can. probably get into this but you know the. industry is dominated by. uh you know a few dozen really large. companies that are self-insured and can. train new drivers so if you want those. good jobs you've got to have several.

years. up until recently now the labor market's. becoming tighter but you had to have. several years of accident-free. you know. perfectly clean record driving to get. into them. the other part of the segment you know. those drivers often don't make minimum. wage. but this leads to one of the sort of. central issues that has been in the. courts and in the legislature. um in some states. is you know what should truck drivers. get paid for right the industry you know.

for the last 30 years or so has said. essentially it's the hours that they log. for safety reasons for the department of. transportation. right. now since the drivers are paid by the. mile. they try to minimize those because those. hours are limited by the federal. government so the federal government. says you can't drive more than 60 hours. in a week as a long-haul truck driver. and so you want to drive as many miles. as you can in those 60 hours and so you. under report them.

right. and so what happens is the companies say. well that guy you know he only said he. logged 45 hours of work that week or 50. hours of work that's all we have to pay. him minimum wage for. when in fact typical truck driver in. these in these jobs will work according. to most people would sort of define it. as like okay i'm at the customer. location i'm waiting to load i'm doing. some paperwork you know i'm inspecting. the truck i'm feeling it. um just waiting to you know get put in. the dock 80 to 90 hours would be sort of.

a typical work week for one of these. these drivers um just when you look at. that does they don't make minimum wage. oftentimes right just to be clear what. we're dancing around here is that a. little bit over a little bit under. minimum wage is nevertheless most. truck drivers seem to be making close to. minimum wage. like this is this. so like we maybe haven't made that clear. there's a there's a few that make quite. a bit of money but like you're. as an entry and for years you're.

operating essentially. uh minimum wage and potentially far less. than minimum wage if you actually count. the number of hours. that are taken out of your life due to. your dedication to trucking. well if you count like the hours taken. out of your life um then you got to go. you know maybe a full 24. that's right yeah from family from yeah. from the high quality of life parts of. your life. yeah and there's a whole nother set of.

rules that the department of labor has. which basically say that a truck driver. who's dispatched away from home. for more than a day should get minimum. wage 24 hours. a day and that could be a state minimum. wage but typically what it would work. out to for most drivers is that you know. a minimum the minimum wage for a truck. driver should be 50s to thousands you. know 55 60 000 should be the minimum. wage of a truck driver and you've. probably heard about the truck driver.

shortage like if you know uh which i. hope we can talk about um. if the minimum wage for truck drivers is. as it should be on the books at you know. around sixty thousand dollars we. wouldn't have a shortage of truck. drivers. oh wow. and to me sixty thousand is not a lot of. money for this kind of job. because you're. this isn't. this is essentially two jobs. and two jobs where you don't get to. sleep with your wife or see your kids.

at night. that's 60 000 is a very little money for. that but you're saying if it was 60 000. you wouldn't even have the shortage if. that was the minimum if that was the. minimum and i think that's what now we. have drivers who start in the 30s. um wow but yeah and i mean so we're. talking two three jobs really when you. look at the total hours that people are. working it you know. they can work over a hundred if they're. a trainer you know um training other. truck drivers well over a hundred hours.

a week. so a job of last resort. maybe you can. jump around from tangent to tangent this. is such a fascinating. and difficult topic. i heard that there's a shortage of. truck drivers so there's more jobs than. truck drivers willing to take on the job. is that the state of. affairs currently. i mean i think the way that you you just. put that is is right. we don't have a shortage of people who. are currently licensed to do the jobs so.

i'm working on a project for the state. of california to look at the shortage of. agricultural drivers and the the first. thing that. the dmv commissioner of the state wanted. to. look at was you know is there actually a. shortage of licensed drivers he's like. i've got a database here of all the. people who have a commercial driver's. license who could potentially have the. credential to do this um. there are about 145 000. jobs in california that require a.

class a cdl which would be that that. commercial driver's license that you. need for the big trucks. um. about 145 000 jobs the industry in their. you know regular. promotion of the idea that there's a. shortage is always projecting forward. and says you know we're going to need. 165 000 or so in the next 10 years. they're currently like 435 000 people. licensed in the state of california to. drive one of these big trucks so so it. is not at all an absence of people who.

i mean and again going back to what we. were talking about before. getting that license is not something. that you just walk down to the dmv and. take the test like this is somebody who. probably quit another job. was unemployed. and took months. to go to a training school right paid. for that training school oftentimes left. their family for months right invested. in what they thought was going to be a. long-term career and then said you know. what forget it i can't i can't do it you.

know. so yeah so it's not just skill it's like. they were psychologically invested. potentially from months if not years. into this kind of position as perhaps a. position that if they lose their current. job they could fall to. okay so that's an indication that. there's something deeply wrong with the. job. if so many licensed people are not. willing to take it what are the biggest. problems of. uh the job of truck driver currently. yeah the the job the problems with the.

job and the labor market right but let's. um let's start with the job which is you. know again. just so much time that's that's not. compensated directly for the amount of. time. um and that's just psychologically and. this was a big part of what i you know. sort of i studied and for the first book. was. you know. that conception of like what's my time. worth. right and like. what truck drivers love is. oftentimes is that tangible.

uh outcome-based compensation so they. say you know what you know honest days. work i work hard i get paid for what i. do i drive 500 miles today that's what. i'm gonna get paid for. and then you get to that dock and they. tell you sorry the load's not ready. go sit over there and you stew. and that weight can break you. psychologically because your. your uh your time. every second becomes more worthless yeah. or worth less.

yeah and again the the industry's gonna. say. for instance. okay well you know they've got skin in. the game right that argument about sort. of compensation based on sort of output. right um but that's a holdover from when. you couldn't observe truckers now they. all have you know satellite-linked. computers in the trucks that tell these. large companies. this driver was you know at this gps. location for four and a half hours right. so if you wanted to compensate them for. that time directly and the trucker can't. control what's happening on that. customer location you know they're. waiting for that you know firm that.

customer to tell them hey pull in there. and so. what it becomes is just a way to shift. the inefficiencies and the cost of that. onto that onto that driver. no it's competitive for customers so if. you're walmart you might have your. choice of a dozen different. trucking companies that could move your. stuff. and if one of them tells you hey you're. not moving our trucks in and out of your. docks fast enough we're going to charge. you for how long our truck is sitting on.

your lot if you're walmart you're going. to say i'll go see what the other guy. says right. and so companies are going to allow that. customer to essentially waste that. driver's time. you know in order to to keep that. business. can you try to describe the economics. the labor market of the situation you. mentioned freight and railroad. what is the. sort of the. dynamic uh financials the economics of. this that allow for. such.

low. low salaries to be paid to truckers like. what what's the competition what's the. alternative to. transporting goods via trucks like what. seems to be broken here from an. economics perspective yeah so it's uh. well nothing it's it's it's a perfect. market. okay right i mean so for economists this. is how it should work right um but the. inefficiencies like you said sorry to. interrupt are pushed to the truck driver. doesn't that like spiral doesn't that.

lead to a poor performance on the part. of the truck driver and just like make. the whole thing more and more. inefficient in it and it results in. lower payment to the truck driver and so. on it just feels like. in capitalism. you should have a competing solution. in terms of uh truck drivers like. another company that provides. transportation via trucks that are that. creates a much better experience for. truck drivers making them more efficient.

all those kinds of things. or how is the competition being. suppressed here yeah so it is the. competition is based on who's cheaper um. and this is this is the cheapest way to. move the freight now you know they're. externalities right i mean this so this. is the. explanation that i think is is obvious. for this right there there are lots of. um. there are lots of costs that you know. whether it's that driver's time whether. it's the you know um time without their. family whether it's the you know. the fact that they drive through.

congestion and and spew lots of diesel. particulates into. cities where kids have asthma and make. our commutes longer rather than more. efficiently use their time by sort of. routing them around. congestion and rush hour and things like. that um it this is the cheapest way to. to move freight um and so it's it's the. most competitive a big part of this is. public subsidy. of training so when those workers are. not paying for. um the training you and i often are.

so if you you know lose your job because. of um you know foreign trade or. um you're you're a veteran using your gi. benefits um you may very well be offered. you know training. publicly subsidized training to become a. truck driver and so all these are. externalities that you know the the. companies don't have to pay for and so. this makes it the most profitable way to. move freight. so trucks is.

way cheaper than uh trains. well over the long so one of the big. stories for these for these companies is. that the average length of haul um which. which becomes very important for. self-driving trucks the average length. of haul has been steadily declining. um over the last 15 years or so you know. this industry collected data from sort. of the you know the big firms that. report it but you know roughly been cut. in half from typically about a thousand. miles to under 500. um and under 500 is.

what a driver can move in a day right so. you can get. loaded. drive and unload you know around 400. miles or something like that. i'm gonna steal a good question from the. pen gazette. interview you did which people should. read it's a great interview. was there a golden age for long-haul. truckers in america and if so this is. just a journalistic question and if so. what enabled it and what brought it to.

an end. wow i i might have to have you read my. answer to that. that was a few years ago be interesting. to compare. what i'll say but um i mean one bigger. question to ask i guess is like. uh you know johnny cash wrote a lot of. songs about truckers there used to be a. time. when um perhaps falsely perhaps it's. part of the kind of perception that you. study with the labor markets and so on. there was a perception of truckers being. first of all a lucrative job and second.

of all a job. uh to be desired. yeah so i mean. this is a. the trucking industry to me is is. fascinating but i think it should be. fascinating to a lot of people um so the. the golden age was really two different. kinds of um. of markets as well right today we have. really good jobs and and some really bad. jobs uh we had the teamsters union that. that controlled the vast majority of. employee jobs and even where they had.

they had something called the national. master freight agreement and this was um. you know jimmy hoffa who who led the. union through its its sort of critical. um period by. the mid 60s had unified essentially the. entire nations trucking labor force. under one contract now you were either. you know covered by that contract or. your employer paid a lot of attention to. it. and so by the end of the 1970s.

the typical truck driver was making well. more than a hundred thousand dollar. typical truck driver was making more. than a hundred thousand dollars in. today's dollars and was home every night. that was without a doubt. and even more than unionized auto. workers steel workers um 10 20 more than. than those workers made. that was the golden age force of job. quality wages teamster power they were. without a doubt the most powerful union.

in the united states at that time. at the same time in the 1970s you had. the um. the mythic long-haul trucker. and these were the guys who were you. know kind of on the margins of the. regulated market which is what the. teamsters controlled a lot of them were. in agriculture which was never regulated. so in the new deal when they decided to. regulate trucking they didn't regulate. agriculture because they didn't want to. drive up food prices which would hurt. workers in urban areas so they. essentially left agricultural.

truckers out of it. and that's where a lot of the kind of. outlaw. you know uh. uh asphalt cowboy. um you know imagery that we get. and um you know i grew up i know you. didn't grow up in in the us at this sort. of you know as a young child. when and i'm a bit older than you but. you know in the late 70s you know there. were movies and tv shows and cbs were. crazed and and it was all these kind of. outlaw truckers who were out there. hauling some unregulated freight they.

weren't supposed to be trying to avoid. the bears you know who are the cops and. um you know with all this salty language. and these like you know um terms that. only they understood and you know the. partying at diners and popping pills you. know the california turnarounds so. asphalt cowboys truly. so yeah it's like another form of cowboy. movies oh absolutely yeah absolutely and. i think. that sort of masculine ethos of like. you got 40 000 pounds of something you. care about i'm your guy you know you.

need it to go from new york to. california don't worry about it i got it. yeah that's appealing and it's tangible. right you think about people who don't. want to be paper pusher and they deal. with office politics like just give me. what you care about and i'll take care. of it you know just pay me fair you know. uh and that that appeals you mentioned. unions teamsters jimmy hoffa. big question maybe difficult question. what are some pros and cons of unions. historically and today in the trucking. space. yeah um.

well if you're you're a worker there. there are a lot of pros um and i don't. you know and this is one of the things i. talked to truckers about a lot yeah. what's their perception of jimmy hoffa. for example and of unions. yeah so and this was probably one of the. central. hypotheses that i had going in there and. it may sound you know um. someone who does hard science right you. mean if they hear a social scientist you. know sort of use that terminology even. other social scientists hypothesis yeah. you know they they don't like it but i i. do like to think that way and my initial.

hypothesis was that you know and it's. very simple. that you know that the tenure of the. driver in the industry would have a. strong effect on how they viewed unions. that you know somebody who had. experienced unions would be more. favorable and someone who had not would. not be right. um and that turned out to be the the. case. without a doubt but in in an interesting. way. which was that even the drivers who were.

not part of the union. um who in the in the kind of. public debate. of. deregulation. uh were portrayed as these kind of small. business truckers who were getting shut. out by the big regulated monopolies and. the teamsters union you know the corrupt. teamsters union. even those drivers longed for the days. of the teamsters. because they recognized the overall. market impact that they had that that. trucking just naturally.

tended toward excessive competition that. meant that there was no profit to be. made and oftentimes you'd be operating. at a loss and so even these you know the. asphalt cowboy owner operators from back. in the day would tell me when the. teamsters were in power i made a lot. more money. um and you know this is. you know unions at least those kinds of. unions like like the teamsters. you know. there's i think a lot of misconceptions.

today sort of popularly about what. unions did back then. they tied wages to productivity like. that was the central thing that the. teamsters union did and you know there. were great accounts of sort of jimmy. hoffa's perspective. for all his portrayal as sort of corrupt. and criminal and there's you know i'm. not disputing that he broke a lot of. laws um. he was remarkably open. about. who he was and what he did he actually. invited a pair a husband and wife team.

of harvard economists. to follow him around. and like opened up the teamsters books. to them. so that they could see how he was you. know thinking about negotiating with the. employers. and the teamsters and this goes back. well before hoffa back to the you know. 1800s. they understood that. workers did better if their employers. did better and the only way the. employers would do better was if they. controlled the market.

and so oftentimes the corruption and. trucking was initiated by employers who. wanted to limit competition and they. knew they couldn't limit competition. without the support of labor and so. you'd get these collusive arrangements. between employers and labor to say no. new trucking companies. there are 10 of us that's enough we. control seattle we're going to set the. price and we're not going to be undercut. when there's a shortage of trucks around. it's great rates rates go up but you get. too many trucks it's very often that you.

end up operating at a loss just to keep. the doors open you know you don't have. any choice you can't it's what. economists call derived demand you can't. like make up a bunch of trucking. services and store it in a warehouse. right you gotta you gotta keep those. trucks moving to pay the bills. can we also lay out the kind of jobs. that are in trucking what are the best. jobs in trucking what are the worst jobs. in trucking what are we how many jobs. we're talking about today. yeah uh and what kind of jobs are there.

so. um there there are a number of different. segments and the the sir the first part. would be you know are you offering the. first question would be are you offering. services to the public or are you moving. your own freight right so are you. a retailer say walmart um or uh you know. a paper company or something like that. that's operating your own. uh fleet of trucks that's private. um. trucking for hire. are are the folks who you know offer. their services out to other other.

customers so you have private and for. hire in general for hire uh pays pays. less. is that because of the something you. talk about what employee versus. contractor situation or are they all. tricked or led to become contractors. that can become a part of it um as a. strategy but the the fundamental reason. is competition so those private carriers. don't um aren't in competition with. other trucking fleets right for their.

own in-house services yeah so you know. they tend to and and this you know if. the question of why private versus for. hire because for hire is cheaper right. um and so if you need that if that. trucking service is central to what you. do and you cannot afford disruptions or. volatility in the price of it you keep. it in-house you should be willing to pay. more for that because it's more valuable. too and you keep it in-house and that so. that's an interesting distinction what. about and this is kind of moving towards. our conversation what can and can't be. automated.

um. how else does it divide. yeah the the different trucking jobs so. it's the next big chunk is kind of how. much stuff are you moving right. and so we have what's called truckload. and truckload means you know you can. fill up a trailer either by volume or by. weight and then less than truckload less. than truckload the official definition. is like less than ten thousand pounds. you know this is going to be a couple. pallets of this a couple pallets of that. the process looks really different right.

so that truckload is you know point a to. point b. i'm buying you know a truckload of of. bounty paper towels i'm bringing it into. you know my distribution center go pick. it up at the at the bounty plant bring. it to my distribution center right. nowhere in between do you stop um at. least process that freight less than. truckload what you've got is terminal. systems and this is what you had under. under regulation too. and so these terminal systems what you. do is you do a bunch of local pickup and. delivery maybe with smaller trucks.

and you pick up two pallets of this here. four pallets of this there you bring it. to the terminal you combine it based on. the destination you then create a full. truckload you know um uh trailer and you. send it to another terminal where it. gets broken back down and then and then. out for local delivery that's gonna look. a lot like if you send a package by. by ups right they pick all these parcels. right figure out where they're all going. put them on planes or or in trailers. going to the same destination then break. them out to put them in what what they.

call package cars. before i ask you uh about autonomous. trucks it's just pause for um your. experience as a trucker. did it get lonely like can you talk. about some of your experiences of what. it was actually like did it get lonely. yeah no i mean it was um. i didn't have kids at the time now now i. have kids i can't even imagine it um. uh you know i've been married for. five years. at the time my wife hated it i hated it.

uh you know i describe in the book. the experience of being stuck. if i remember correctly was like ohio. uh at this truck stop in the middle of. nowhere and like you know sitting on. this concrete barrier and just watching. fireworks in the distance and like. eating chinese food on the 4th of july. and you know my wife calls me from like. the family barbecue. and our anniversary is july 8th and. she's like are you gonna be home and i'm. like.

i don't know you know. um. i have a. uh cousin. whose husband drove. drove truck as a truck driver would say. drove truck for a while. um. and he told me before i went into it he. was like the the advantage you have is. that you know that you're not going to. be doing this long term. like and lex i can't even like. the emotional content of some of these. interviews i mean i would sit down at a. truck stop with somebody i had never met.

before and you know you open the spigot. and the the the last question i would. ask drivers was. that by the time i really sort of. figured out how to do it the last. question i i would ask them is you know. what advice would you give to somebody. your nephew you know a family friend. asks you about what it's like to be a. driver and should they do it what advice. would you give them. and this question. some of these you know grizzled old. drivers you know tough tough guys.

would that question would like some of. them would break down and they would say. i would say to them. you better have everything that you ever. wanted in life already. because. i've had a car that i've had for 10. years it's got 7000 miles on it i own a. boat. that hasn't seen the water in five years. my kids i didn't raise them like i i'd. be out for two weeks at a time. i'd come home. my my wife would give me two kids to.

punish a list of things to do you know. on saturday night. and i might leave out sunday night or. monday morning you know i come home dead. tired my kids don't know who i am. and you know it was just like. it was heartbreaking to hear those. stories and before you know it. uh you know life is short and just the. years run away. yeah. hard question to ask in that context but. what's the best what was the best part.

of being a truck driver. was there moments uh that you truly. enjoyed on the road oh absolutely there. was um. there's definitely a pride and mastery. of you know even basic confidence of. sort of piloting this thing safely. there's a lot of responsibility to it. that thing's dangerous and you know it. so there's there's some pride there for. me personally and i know for a lot of. other drivers it's just like seeing. these behind the scenes places that you. know exist in our economy.

um and i think we're all much more aware. of them now after covet and supply chain. mess that we have i don't know if we'll. talk about that but you know. you get to see those places you know you. get to see those ports you get to see. the the place where they make the. cardboard boxes that the huggy diapers. go in huggies diapers going or the. warehouse full of bud light i moved bud. light from like upstate new york and the. first load like went to atlanta. you know and then a couple months later.

i circled back through that same brewery. and i brought a load of bud light out to. michigan. and i was like holy all the bud. light like you know for this whole giant. swath of the united states comes from. this one plant this cavernous plant with. like kegs of beer and you see that part. of the economy and it's like you're. almost like you're an economic tourist. um and i think all everybody kind of. appreciates that like kind of it's. almost like a behind-the-scenes tour. um.

that wears off after a few months you. know you start to see new things less. and less frequently at first. everything's novel and sort of life on. the road and then it becomes just. endless miles of white lines and yellow. lines and truck stops and. the days just blur together um you know. it's one loading dock after another so. you lose the magic of being on the road. yeah it's it's very rare the driver that. doesn't. you mentioned covet and supply chain.

while being this. for a brief time this member of the. supply chain what have you come to. understand about. our supply chain united states and. global. and its resilience against uh strategies. catastrophes in the world like kovid for. example yeah i mean we we have built. really long really lean supply chains. and and just by definition. they're fragile.

um you know the the current mess that we. have. it's not going to clear by christmas it. will be lucky if it clears by next. christmas can you describe the current. medicine supply chain that you're. referring to yeah so we've got pileups. of of ships off the the coast of. california long beach and and la in. particular and in bad shape. um you know last i checked it was around. 60 ships all of which are holding. thousands of containers full of stuff.

that retailers were hoping was going to. be on shelves for the holiday season. meanwhile the port itself has stacks and. stacks of containers that they can't get. rid of. the truckers aren't showing up to pick. up the containers that are there so they. can't offload. the the ships that are that are waiting. and why aren't the. why aren't the truckers picking it up. partly because there's a long history of. inefficiency and maybe making them wait. but it's because the warehouses are full.

so. and so we've had all these perverse you. know outcomes that no one really. expected like in the middle of all these. shortages. people are stockpiling stuff so. there are suppliers who used to keep two. months of supply of bottled water on. hand. and after going through covid and not. having supply to send to their customers. they're like. we need three months. well our system is not designed for.

major. storage of goods to go up 50 in a. category it's lean. if you're a warehouse operator you know. you want to be 90 plus you don't want a. lot of open bays sitting around so. we don't have you know 10 percent extra. capacity in warehouses you know we don't. have 10 of them trucking capacity can. fluctuate a bit but you know. you don't have that kind of of slack and. and now. i mean we saw this right when people. shifted consumption and i get a little.

i had a little mad when people talk. about panic buying as kind of the you. know the the reason that we had all. these shortages and it really like it's. preventing us from understanding you. know the real problem there which is. that that lean supply chain sure there. was some panic buying you know no doubt. about it but we had an enormous shift in. people's behavior so i. with uh with my sister and. brother-in-law i own a couple of small. businesses and we serve food right so we. we get you know food from cisco.

um. cisco couldn't get rid of food right. because nobody's eating out so they've. got you know 50 pound sacks of flour. you know uh sitting in their warehouse. that they can't get rid of they've got. cases of lettuce and meat and everything. else that's just going to go bad. so that panic buying certainly. exacerbated some things like toilet. paper and whatever but we saw just a. massive change in demand and our supply. chains are based on historical data. right so you know that stuff leaves asia.

you know months before you you want to. have it on the shelves and you're. predicting based on last year you know. what you want on that that shelf um. and so it's a it's a you know i guess at. its best it's a beautiful symphony of. lots of moving parts um. but now. everyone can't get on the same page of. music but it's not resilient to changes. in uh. on mass. human behavior so even like um i read.

somewhere. maybe you can tell me if this true in. relation to food. it's just the change of human behavior. between going out to restaurants versus. eating at home. as a as a species we consume a lot less. food that way apparently what i read in. restaurants. like there's a lot of food just thrown. out it's part of the business model. yeah and so like you then have to move a. lot more food through the whole supply. chain and now. because you're.

consuming you know there's leftovers at. home you're consuming much more of the. food you. you're getting when you're eating at. home that's creating these bottleneck. situations problems as you're referring. to too much in a certain place not. enough in another place and it's just. the supply chain is not robust those. kind of dynamic. shifts in who gets what where. yeah. yeah i mean so and i have worked in. agriculture a bit on sort of the. supply side um you know and there are.

product categories right where 30 of the. crop raised does not. get used right it just gets plowed under. or or wasted but. here's the importance of this in sort of. getting this right you know like that. not that like panic buying you know. blame the irrational consumer. you know look at the hard sort of truth. of the way we've we've set up our. economy and. i'll i'll ask you this lex i know. um you you're a hopeful optimistic.

person 100 yes yeah i am too i mean i. write about problems all the time and so. people think i'm sort of like a just a. debbie downer you know. pessimist but i'm a i'm a glass half. full kind of guy like i want i want to. identify problems so so we can solve. them. so let me ask you this we've got these. long lean supply chains in the. future. do you see. more. environmental. problems that could disrupt them.

more. geopolitical problems that could disrupt. trade from asia. you know um other. institutional failures do those things. seem. you know potentially more likely in the. future. than they have been in say the last 20. years yeah. it almost absolutely seems to be the. case so you then have to ask the. question of uh how do we. change. our supply chains whether it's making.

more resilient or make them. less densely connected. um. you know building uh it's like a what is. it. you know. the the tesla model for in the. automotive sector of like trying to. build every like. trying to get the factory to do as much. as possible with as little reliance on. widely distributed. uh sources of the supply chain as. possible so maybe. like rethinking how much we rely on the. infrastructure of the supply chain.

yeah i mean you know there's some basic. and i i assume right that that there are. a lot of folks in corporate boardrooms. looking at risk and saying that didn't. go well. and maybe it could have even gone worse. um. maybe we need to think about reshoring. right um. at the very least. one of the things that i'm hearing about. anecdotally is that they're storing. stuff up you know when they can right um. which is that's not that's probably not.

sustainable right i mean at some point. somebody in that corporate boardroom is. going to say. you know guys inventory is getting kind. of heavy the cost of that is like do we. can we really justify that much longer. to the shareholders right um we should. we can back off and start you know back. things are back to normal let's lean out. what uh my hope is that there's a. technology solution to a lot of aspects. of this so one of them on the supply. chain side is collecting a lot more data. like having much uh more integrated and. accurate representation of the inventory. all over the place.

and the available transportation. mechanisms the trucks the all kinds of. freight and how. in the different models of the possible. catastrophic catastrophes that can. happen. what like how will the system respond so. having a really solid model that you're. operating under as opposed to just kind. of being in in emergency response mode. under poor incomplete information which. is what seems like is more commonly the. case.

except for things like you said walmart. and amazon they're trying to internally. get their stuff together on that front. but that doesn't help the rest of the. economy so. um. another exciting technological. development as you write about as you. think about is autonomous trucks. so these are often brought up in. different contexts as the examples of ai. and robots taking our jobs. how true is this should we be concerned.

i think they've really come to epitomize. this anxiety over automation right just. it's such a simple idea. right truck that drives itself you know. classic. blue-collar job that pays well. you know um guy maybe with not a lot of. other good options right um to sort of. make that same income easily. right and you build a robot to. take his job away right um. so. i think.

2016 or so that was that was the sort of. big question out there and that that's. actually how i. started studying it right i just wrapped. up the book. just so happened that somebody was. working at uber uber had just bought. otto saw the book and was like hey can. you come out and. talk to our engineering teams about what. life is like for truck drivers and maybe. how our technology could make it better. and you know at that time. there were a lot of different ideas. about how they were going to play out. right so.

while the press was saying you know all. truckers are going to lose their jobs. there were a lot of people in in. these engineering teams who thought okay. you know if we've got an individual. owner operator. you know and and they can only drive. eight or ten hours a day. you know they hop in the back. they get their rest and the asset that. they own works for them mm-hmm right. sort of sort of perfect right um. and at that time you know there were a. bunch of reports that came out and so. basically what people did was they they.

took the category of truck driver you. know some people took a larger category. from bls of you know sales and delivery. workers that was about three and a half. million. workers and and others took the heavy. duty truck driver category which was at. the time about 1.8 million or so. and they you know picked a start date. and a slope. and said you know. let's assume that all these jobs are. just going to disappear and. um. really smart researcher annetta. bernhardt at the. labor center at uc berkeley.

was sort of looking around um for people. who were sort of. deeply into industries to complicate. those. analyses right yeah and reached out to. me and was like what do you think of. this and i said the industry's super. diverse you know this is just i haven't. given a ton of thought but it can't be. that you know it's not that simple you. know it never is um and so she was like. well you you know will you do this and i. i was like ready to move on to another. topic you know i had like been in. trucking for 10 years um and that that's. how it i started looking at it and it is.

it's a lot more complicated and the. the initial impacts and here's the. challenge i think and it's not just a. research challenge it's it's the. fundamental public policy challenge is. we look at the existing industry. and the impacts the potential impacts. they're not. you know nothing. for for some communities and some kinds. of drivers they're going to be hard and. there and there are a significant number. of them nowhere near what people thought.

you know i i estimate like around 300. 000. but that's a static picture of the. existing industry. and here's the the key with this is. at least in my. my conclusion is this is a. transformative technology. we are not going to swap in. self-driving trucks for human-driven. trucks and all else stays the same this. is going to reshape our supply chains. it's going to reshape landscapes it's. going to affect our ability to fight.

climate change. this is a really important technology in. this space do you think it's possible to. predict the future. of. the kind of opportunities it will create. how it will change the world. so like when you have the internet. you can start saying like all the kind. of ways that office work all jobs will. be lost because it's easy to network and. then. software engineering allows you to. automate a lot of the tasks that.

microsoft excel does you know. but it opened up so many opportunities. even with things that are difficult to. imagine like with the internet i don't. know wikipedia which is widely making. accessible information and that uh. increased the general education globally. by a lot all those kinds of things like. and then the the ripple effects of that. in terms of your ability to. find other jobs. is probably immeasurable so is it is it.

just a hopeless pursuit to try to. predict. uh if uh you talk about these six. different uh trajectories that we might. take. in automating trucks but like as a. result of taking those trajectories is. it a hopeless pursuit to predict what. the future will result in yeah. it is. it absolutely is because it's the wrong. question yeah the question is. what do we want the future to be and. let's shape it.

right um and and i think this is you. know and this is the only point that i. really want to make in my work you know. for the foreseeable future. is that you know. we have got to get out of this. mindset. that we're just going to let technology. kind of. go and it's a natural process and. whatever pops out will fix the problems. on the back side and and and we've got. to recognize that one that's not what we. do. right um you know and self-driving.

vehicles is just such a perfect example. right we would not be sitting here today. if the defense department right if. congress. in 2000 had not written into legislation. funding for the darpa challenges which. followed actually i think the funding. came a couple years later but the. priority that they wrote in 2000 was. let's get a third of all ground vehicles. in our military forces unmanned right. and this was before.

aerial unmanned vehicles had really sort. of proven their worth they would come to. be incredibly like you know just blow. people out of the. blow people's minds in terms of their. additional capabilities the lower cost. you know keeping you know uh soldiers. out of harm's way now of course they. raised other problems and considerations. that i think we're still wrestling with. but. that was even before that they had this. priority. we would not be sitting here today if. congress in 2000 had not said let's. bring this about. so they already had that vision actually. i didn't know about that so for people.

who don't know the upper challenges. is the. the events that were just kind of like. these. seemingly small scale challenges that. brought together some of the smartest. roboticists in the world and that. somehow created enough of a magic. where uh. ideas flourished both engineering and. scientific. that eventually then. uh was the catalyst for creating all. these different companies that took on. the challenge some failed some succeeded. some are still fighting the good fight.

that somehow just that little bit of. challenge was the was the essential. spark. of uh progress that now resulted in this. beautiful. up and down wave of hype and. and uh profit and all this kind of weird. dance where. the b word billions of dollars have been. thrown being thrown around and we still. don't know and the t word trillions of. dollars in terms of transformative. effects of autonomous vehicles and all. that started from darp and those initial. that initial vision of i guess as you're.

saying of automating part of the. military uh supply chain. yeah i did not know that that's. interesting so they had the same kind of. vision for the military as we're not. talking about a vision for the civilian. whether it's trucking whether it's. autonomous vehicle sort of ride-sharing. kind of application yeah i mean what an. incredible spark right. um. and and it just the story of. what it produced right i mean. um your own work on self-driving right i.

mean you you've studied it as an. academic right how many great. researchers and minds have been. harnessed. by this outcome of that spark right and. i think this is sort of theoretically. about technology right this is what. makes it so great is that it's what. makes us human in my opinion right is. that you. you conceive of something in your mind. and then you bring it into reality right. i mean that that's what is so great. about it um sometimes you're too dumb to. realize how difficult it.

right is then eventually you're you're. too uh. you're in too deep. you might as well solve the problem well. and maybe we're in that situation right. now with self-driving but you know and. so let me throw this out there i i'd be. curious to hear your thoughts on it but. uh the truck drivers always always ask. me like is this for real like is this. really do like it's harder than they. think like right and they're they can't. really do this. and you know at first i was like look. you know this is like the defense.

department and like basically the top. computer science and real robotics. departments in the world um and now. silicon valley with billions of dollars. in funding and just you know some of the. smartest hardest working most visionary. people focused on what is clearly. you know a gigantic market. right. and what i tell them is like if the if. if self-driving vehicles don't happen.

i think this will be the biggest. technology failure story in human. history i don't know of. anything else that is just galvanized i. mean you've had people in garages or. weird inventors work on things their. whole lives and come really close and it. never happens and it's a great failure. story right but never have we had like. whole i mean we're talking about gm. right and these are not you know these. are not tech companies right these are. industrial giants right what what were. in the 20th century the pinnacle of.

industrial production in the world in. human history. right and they're focused on it now so. if. we don't pull this off it's like. wow it's fascinating to think about i've. never thought of it that way i there was. a mass hysteria. oh on a level in terms of excitement and. hype on a level that's probably. unparalleled in technology space like. i've seen that kind of hysteria just. studying history when you talk about. military conflict so we often wage war.

with a dream of making a better world. and then realize it cost trillions of. dollars and then we step back and like. and go wait a minute what do we actually. get. for this. but in the space of technology it seems. like all these kind of large efforts. have paid off. this you're right. it seems like um. it seems like giving gm and ford and all. these companies now are a little bit. like. hey um or toyota and uh even tesla. like are we uh are we sure about this.

yeah. and it's fascinating to think about when. you tell the story of this this could be. one of the big. the first perhaps. but by far the biggest failures of the. dream. in the space of technology. that's really interesting to think about. i was a skeptic for a long time. because of the human factor. because for business to work in the. space you have to work with humans and. you have to work with humans at ever at. every level so in the truck driving.

space you have to work with the truck. driver but you also have to work with a. society that has a certain conception of. what driving means and also have to have. work with businesses that are not used. to. this extreme. level of technology you know. in um. in the basic operation of their business. so i thought it would be really. difficult to uh to move to autonomous. vehicles in that way. but. then i realized that there's certain. companies that are just. willing to take big risks and really. innovate.

i think uh. the first impressive company to me was. waymo or what was used to be the google. self-driving car. and and i saw. okay. here's a company that's willing to. really think long term and really try to. solve this problem hire great engineers. uh then i saw tesla with mobile eye when. they first had i thought would actually. mobilize the thing that impressed me. when i sat down i thought because i'm a. computer vision person i thought there's. no way.

a system could keep me in lane. long enough for it to be a pleasant. experience for me. so from a computer vision perspective i. thought there'd be too many failures. it'd be really annoying it'd be a. gimmick a toy it wouldn't actually. create a pleasant experience. and when i first was gotten the tesla. with mobileye the initial mobilize. system it actually held to lane for. quite a long time to where i could relax. a little bit and it was a really. pleasant experience i couldn't exactly. explain why it's pleasant because it's. not like i still have to really pay.

attention but i can relax my shoulders a. little bit i'm i'm i can be. i can look around a little bit more and. for some reason i was really. reducing the stress and then over time. tesla with uh with a lot of the. revolutionary stuff they're doing on the. machine learning space made me believe. that there's uh. opportunities here to innovate to come. up with totally new ideas another very. sad story. that i was really excited about is. cadillac super crew system it is a sad.

story because i think i vaguely read in. the news they just said they're. discontinuing super cruise but it's a. nice innovative way of doing driver. attention monitoring and also doing lane. keeping and it's just innovation could. solve this in ways we don't predict the. same with the in the trucking space it. might not be as simple as like. journalist and vision a few years ago. where everything's just automated it. might be. gradually. helping out the truck drive in some ways.

that make their life. more efficient more effective. more pleasant. make the like remove some of the. inefficiencies that we've been talking. about in totally innovative ways and. that i still have that dream that uh i. believe to solve the fully autonomous. driving problem we're still many years. away. but on the way to solving that problem. it feels like there could be. if there's bold. risk takers and innovators in the space. there's an opportunity to come up with.

uh. like subtle. technologies that make all the. difference that's that's actually just. what i realized. is sometimes little design decisions. make all the difference. it's the blackberry versus the iphone. you know. why is it that you have a glass and. you're using your finger. for all of the work versus the buttons. makes all the difference this idea that. now you have a giant screen. so that. every part of the experience is now a.

digital experience so you can have. things like apps that change everything. like you can't. you know when you're first thinking. about do i want a keyboard or not on a. smartphone you think it's just the. keyboard decision. but then you later realize. by removing the keyboard. you're enabling a whole ecosystem of. technologies that are inside the phone. and now you're making the smartphone. into a computer and that same way. who knows how you can transform trucks. right by like automating some parts of.

it maybe uh adding. some uh displays maybe it allows you to. maybe giving the the truck driver some. control in the supply chain to make. decisions all those kinds of things yeah. uh so i don't know so what's where where. are you on the. spectrum of hope. for. uh the role of automation in trucking. i i think automation is is inevitable. and again i think the this is really.

going to be transformative and it's. going to be. i i've studied the history of trucking. technology as much as i can there you. know there's not a lot a lot of great. stuff written and you kind of have to. you know uh there's a lot of data and. places to know sort of volumes of stuff. and how they're changing etc but. the big. revolutionary changes in in trucking are. because of constellations of factors. it's it's not just one thing right so. daimler builds you know a motorized.

truck and i think it's 1896. right um. intercities trucking. that so basically what they use that. truck for is just to swap out horses. right they basically do the same thing. the service doesn't really change you. know um and then world war one really. spurs the development of bigger larger. trucks like spreads you know air air. filled tires and then. we start paving roads. right and. paved roads. right air filled tires.

and the internal combustion engine. now you got a winning mix now it met. with demand for people who wanted to get. out from under the thumb of the. railroads. right so there was all of this pent-up. demand to get cheaper freight from the. countryside. into cities and between cities. that typically had to go by rail and so. now you know. 40 years. after that internal combustion engine. it becomes this absolutely essential.

right this necessary but not sufficient. piece of technology to create the modern. trucking industry. in the 1930s and i think self-driving is. going to be self-driving trucks are. going to be part of that and the idea i. don't i guess we we credit jeff bezos. the idea is. you know um. okay so sam walton if we can do it like. a slight tangent on sort of the. importance of trucking to business. strategy and sort of how it has. transformed our our world.

the central insight that sam walton had. that made him the giant that he was in. influencing the way that so many people. get stuff. was a trucking insight. and so if you look at the way that. he developed his system you build a. distribution center and then you ring it. with stores. those stores are never further out from. that distribution center than a human. driven truck. can drive back and forth in one day.

and so rather than the way all of his. competitors were doing it with. sending trucks all over the place and. having people sleep overnight and sort. of making the trucking service fit. where they had stores. he designed the layout of the stores. right to fit what trucks could do. and so transportation and logistics. right become. walmart's you know edge right and allows. them to to dominate the space that's the. challenge that amazon has now they've.

they've mastered the digital part of it. right and now they got to figure out. like how do we you know. dominate the actual physical movement. that complements. that um others are obviously going to. follow. but the capabilities of these trucks is. completely different than. the capability of a human-driven truck. so. if you're smith-packing right and you've. got you know uh a bunch of meat in a. warehouse and it's going to.

grocery distribution centers. you know you have that trucker probably. come in the night before. and you make him wait so that he has. you know a full 10 hour break which is. what the law requires so that he can get. to the furthest reaches that he can of. one of those stores. right so he can drive his full 11 hours. and and bring that meat so it doesn't. have to sit overnight in that. refrigerated trailer right and so their. system is based on that now what happens. when that truck can now travel.

two. times as far right three times as far. now you don't need the warehouses where. they were. now you can go super lean with your. inventory instead of having. meat here meet there meet there you can. put it all right here and if it's cheap. enough. substitute those transportation costs. for all that warehousing costs right so. this is going to remake landscapes in. the same way that big box supply chains. did right and then of course the further.

complement of that is. you know how do you then get it to. two people at their door. right and you know the big box supply. chain it moves. very few items. in really large quantities to very few. locations. pretty slowly. right um. ecommerce aspires you know to do. something completely different right. move huge varieties of things in small. quantities virtually everywhere as fast. as possible.

right and so that is. like that inter-city. trucking under the you know in the um. era of of railroad monopolies right the. demand for that is potentially enormous. right and and that so there's there's. such a so right now i think a lot of the. the business plans for sort of automated. trucks right and sort of the way that. the journalistic accounts portray it is. like okay if we swap out a human for a. computer what are the labor costs per. mile and like oh here's the.

profitability of self-driving trucks. like this is transformative technology. we're going to change the way we get. stuff so we could actually get a lot. more trucks period with like with. autonomous trucks because they would. enable if a very different kind of. transportation networks you think yeah. here's and this is where it's like uh oh. like yeah so. wait we really thought we were gonna be. electrifying trucks. if they're going twice as far if they're. moving three times as much if they're.

going three times as far right what does. that mean for how far we are behind on. batteries right we've got sort of these. you know ideas about like man we you. know here's how far how close we could. get to meet this demand that demand is. going to radically change right these. trucks are you know so then we've got to. think about all right if it's not. battery you know how how are we powering. these things and how many of them are. they're going to be. like right now we've got five million. containers that move from la and long.

beach to chicago on. rail. rail is three or four times at least. more efficient than trucks in terms of. greenhouse gas emissions. and on that lane it varies a lot. depending on demand but maybe rail has a. 20 advantage in cost maybe 25 but it's a. couple days slower. so now you cut the cost of that truck. transportation per mile by 30 percent. now it's cheaper than rail and it gets. the stuff there five days faster than.

rail how many millions of containers are. going to leave la and long beach on. self-driving trucks and go to chicago. and it might look very much like a train. if. if we go with the platooning solution. you have just these rows of like. imagine like rows of like 10 like dozens. of trucks or like hundreds of trucks. like some absurd situation just going. from la to chicago yeah just this train. but taking up a highway.

i mean uh. this is probably a good place to talk. about various scenarios. but before we get there can i can i just. make one one interesting observation. that i made as. a driver um when you're in a truck. you're up higher you know so you can you. can see further and you can see the. traffic patterns. and. um cars move them packs. i'm sure there's academic research on. this right but they move in packs they. kind of bunch up behind a slower car and. then a bunch of them break free and this.

is sort of on almost free-flowing. highways they kind of move in packs and. you can kind of see them in the truck. so you know rather than platoons we. might have like hives you know of trucks. right so you have like 20 trucks moving. in some coordinated fashion right and. then maybe the self-driving cars are you. know because people don't like to be. around them or whatever it is right you. might have a pod of you know 20. self-driving cars sort of moving in a. packet behind them you know this is what. if the aliens came down or were just. observing.

cars which is one of the uh. sort of prevalent characteristics of. human civilization is there seems to be. these cars like moving around. that would do this kind of analysis of. like huh what's the interesting. clustering of situations here. especially with autonomous vehicles i. like this okay so. what technologically speaking do you see. are the different scenarios. of increasing automation in in trucks. what are some ideas that you think about.

for the most part i have no. i i have no influence on sort of what. these ideas were so what the what the. project was that i did was um. i said technology is created by people. they they solve for x and they have some. conception of what they want to do. and that's where we should start in sort. of thinking about what the you know. impacts might be so i went and i talked. to everybody i could find who was. you know thinking about developing a. self-driving truck and the question was. essentially you know what do you what.

are you trying to build like what do you. envision this thing doing. it turned out that. that for a lot of them was an. afterthought they knew the the sort of. technological capabilities that a. self-driving vehicle would have and. those were the problems that they were. tackling you know they were engineers. and computer scientists and oh robotics. people i love you so much. this is i i i could i could talk forever. about this but yes there's a technology. problem let's focus on that we'll figure. out the actual.

uh impact on society how it's actually. going to be applied how it's actually. going to be integrated from a policy and. from a human perspective from a business. perspective later first let's solve the. technology problem that's not how life. works friends but okay i'm sorry yeah. yeah so i mean i mean i'm sure you know. the division of labor in these companies. right there's sort of a business. development side you know and then. there's the engineering side right and. the engineers are like oh my god what. are these business development people. you know why are they involved. in this process so i ended up sort of.

coming up with a few different ideas. that people seem to be batting around. and then really try to zero in on a. layman's understanding of the. limitations right and. it it turns out that's really obvious. and and quite simple. highway driving's a lot simpler right um. so you know the the plan is simplify the. problem right um and focus on highways. because city driving is. is so um so much more complicated. so.

from that i i came up with basically six. scenarios actually i came up with five. that the developers were talking about. and then one that i thought was a good. idea that i had read about. um i think in like 2013 or 2014. which was actually something that the us. military was looking at i actually first. heard about the idea of this kind of. automation at least in in um in. sketched-out form in like 2011 i guess. it was with peloton which was this sort.

of early technology entrant into the. trucking industry which was working on. platooning platooning trucks. and and all they were doing was you know. a cooperative adaptive cruise control as. they they came to call it um. and we ended up on a panel together and. it's it's kind of interesting because i. was on that panel because. i was thinking about how we got the best. return on investment for fuel efficient. technologies. and if it's cool i'll sort of set set.

this up because it does it comes into. sort of the story of some of these. scenarios. so. when i studied the drivers. you had this like. complete difference in. the driving tasks. like we were talking about before with. long haul and city right and. you're not paid in the city you've got. congestion the turns are tight. um there's lots of you know pedestrians. you know all the things that. self-driving trucks don't like truckers.

don't like right and they're not paid. there's lots of waiting time and then in. the highway they get to cruise they're. getting paid they have control they go. at their own pace they're making money. they're happy. well it turned out i guess it was around. 2010 this is still when we were thinking. about regenerative braking you know and. hybrid trucks being sort of like the. solution. um. the. problems with them sort of and the. advantages you know also split on what i. was thinking of kind of the rural urban.

divide at that time right so like you. got the regenerative braking right um. you can make the truck lighter you can. keep it local right um you don't get any. benefit from that you know hybrid. electric in the. uh. on the rural highway you want. aerodynamics right. there you want low rolling resistance. tires and these super aerodynamic sleek. trucks right where we know with. off-the-shelf technology today we could. double the fuel economy more than double. the fuel economy of the typical truck in.

that highway segment if we segmented the. duty cycle right and so in the urban. environment you want a clean burning. truck so you're not giving kids asthma. you want it lighter so it's not. destroying those those less. strong pavements right um you're not you. can make tighter turns you don't need a. sleeper cab because the driver you know. hopefully is getting home at night right. in the long haul you want that super. aerodynamic stuff now that doesn't get. you anything in the city and in fact it. causes all kinds of problems because you. turn too tight you crunch up all the. aerodynamics that connect the the.

tractor and the trailer so. the idea that i had was like okay what. if we deliberately segmented it like. what if we created these drop lots. outside cities. where. you know a local city driver who's paid. by the hour kind of runs these trailers. out once they're loaded you know it. doesn't sit there and wait while it's. being loaded they drop off a trailer. they go pick up one that's loaded they. run it out when it's loaded they call. them and they just run them out there. and stage them it's like an uber driver. but for uh truckloads yeah we have like.

intermodal we have like we have. basically this would be the equivalent. of like rail to truck inner motor right. so you put it on the rail and then you. know a truck trucker picks it up and. delivers it right so instead of having. the rail you'd have these super. aerodynamic hopefully platoons or or. what was at the time was called long. combination vehicles which is basically. two trailers connected together right. because this is like a huge productivity. gain right um and then instead of that. driver like me i would pick up something. in upstate new york drive to michigan. drive to alabama you know drive to.

wisconsin drive to florida you know i. get home every two weeks if i'm just. running that you know um. that double. trailer i might be able to go back and. forth from chicago to detroit right take. two trailers there pick up two trailers. going back right and be home every night. now the problem with that at the time or. one of them was you know. bridge weights so you can't not all. bridges can handle. that that much weight on them they can't. handle these doubles right and some. places can some places can't so this. platooning idea was happening at the.

same time and we ended up on the same. panel and the founders were like hey so. what's it like to follow really close. behind another truck which was kind of. the the stage that they were at was like. you know what's that experience gonna be. like and i was like it truckers aren't. gonna like it you know i mean that. that's just like the cardinal rule is. following distance like that's the one. you really shouldn't violate right um. and and when you're out on the road like. you have that trucker like right on your. ass you know people remember that they. don't remember the 99.9.

of truckers that are not on their ass. you know like they they they're very. careful about that but when you're when. the trucks are really close together. there's benefits in terms of. aerodynamics so that's the the idea so. like if you. want to get some benefits of uh a. platoon you want that to be close. together but you're saying that's very. uncomfortable for truckers yeah so i. mean i think that ended up at the i mean. peloton i think is is sort of winding. down um their their work on this um and. i think that ended up being still an.

open question like and i had a chance to. interview a couple drivers who um at. least one maybe two of which had. actually driven in their platoons um and. i got completely different experiences. some of them were like it's really cool. you know i'm like in communication with. that other driver um you know i can see. on a screen what what's out out you know. the front of his truck um and then. somewhere like it's too close um and it. might be one of those things that's just. you know takes an adjustment to to sort. of get there. so you get the aerodynamic advantage. which which you know saves fuel um.

there's some problems though right so. you know you're getting that aerodynamic. advantage because there's a low pressure. system in front of that following truck. but the the engine is designed with. higher pressure um feeding that engine. right so there are sort of adjustments. that you need to make and you know still. the benefits are are there. that's one scenario and that's just the. automation of that acceleration and. braking. starsky which um you know. probably a lot of your listeners heard.

heard about. um was working on another scenario which. was. you know to solve that local problem was. going to do tele operation right sort of. remote piloting um i had a chance to you. know sort of watch. watch them do that it was you know they. they drove a truck in florida from um. from san francisco in in one of their. office offices uh that was that was. really interesting and then in case it's. not clear tele operation means you're. controlling. the truck remotely like it's a video.

game. so uh. you got the chance to witness it does it. actually work. yeah i mean so it's uh what are the pros. and cons you know one of the problems. with with doing research like this with. all these with all these silicon valley. folks are the ndas. all right. right so so i don't you know i don't. know what i'm able to say uh about sort. of watching it but obviously the their. public statements about sort of what the. challenges are right and it's about the. the latency. and the ability to sort of in real time.

there's challenges that let me say one. thing uh so i'm talking to the the. you know i've talked to the waymo cto. i'm in conversations with them talking. to the the head of trucking boris uh. sofman. in next month actually i'm a huge fan of. his because he was uh i think the. founder of anki which is a toy robotics. company. uh so i love cute i love human robot. interaction and he created one of the. most. uh effective and beautiful.

toy robots. um anyway i keep complaining to them on. email privately. that uh. there's way too much marketing in these. conversations and not enough showing off. the both the challenge and the beauty of. the engineering efforts and that seems. to be the case for a lot of these. silicon valley tech companies they they. put up this uh you talk about ndas. they they've i for some reason. rightfully wrongfully. because there's been so much hype and so.

much money being made. they don't see the um. the upside in. being transparent and educating the. public about how difficult the problem. is. it's much more effective for them to say. we have everything solved this will. change everything this will change. society as we know and just kind of wave. their hands as opposed to exploring. together like these different scenarios. what are the pros and cons why is it. really difficult. you know what are the what are the gray. areas of where it works and doesn't uh.

what's the role of the human in this. picture of the both the sort of the. operators and the other humans on the. road all of that which are fascinating. human problems fascinating engineering. problems that i wish we could have a. conversation about as opposed to uh. always feeling like it's just marketing. talk because a lot of what we're talking. about now. even you with having private. conversations under nda. you still don't have the full picture. of everything of how difficult this.

problem is one of the. big questions i've had still have is how. difficult is driving i've disagreed with. you know elon musk and jim keller on. this point i have a sense that driving. is. really difficult. you know the task of driving just. broadly this is like philosophy talk. how. how much intelligence is required. to drive a car. so. from uh like a jim keller who used to be. the head of autopilot the idea is that.

it's just a collision avoidance problem. it's like billiard balls. it's like you have to convert the drive. you have to do some basic perception a. computer vision to convert. driving into a game of pool and then you. just have to get everything into a. pocket yeah to me there seems to be some. game theoretic dance. uh combined with the fact that people's. life is at stake and then when people. die at the hands of a robot the reaction. is going to be much more complicated so. all of that but that's still an open. question and the cool thing is all of.

these companies. are struggling with this question. of how difficult is it to solve this. problem sufficiently such that we can. build the business on top of it and have. a product that's going to make a huge. amount of money and compete with the. manually driven uh. vehicles and so their tele operation. from starsky's is a really interesting. idea how much. can uh i mean there's a few autonomous. vehicle companies that tried to. integrate tele operation in the picture. can we. reduce some of the costs.

while still having reliability. like uh. catch when the vehicle. fails by having tele operation it's an. open question. so. that's that's for you scenario number. two is to uh use teleoperation as part. of the picture yeah let me let me follow. up on that question of how hard driving. is because this this becomes a big. question for researchers who are. thinking about labor market impacts. right because. we start from a perspective of what's.

hard or easy for humans right um and so. you know if you were to look at truck. driving prior to a lot i mean there's. been a lot of thinking and debate in um. in academic you know research circles. around sort of how you estimate labor. impacts right what these models look. like and a lot of it is about how. automatable is a job object recognition. really easy for people right really hard. for computers and so there's a whole. bunch of things that you know truck. drivers do.

that we see as you know super easy and. as it would have been characterized 10. years ago routine and it's not for a. computer right it's a it's it turns out. to be something that we do naturally. that is that is you know sort of cutting. edge right um computer science. so on the tele operation question i. think this is um. this is a more interesting one than than. people would like to sort of let on i. think publicly. um. they're going to be problems right um.

and this is one of the complexities of. sort of putting these things out in the. world and if you see the real world of. trucking you realize. wow it's rough you know there are dirt. lots there's gravel there's salt and ice. and cold weather and there's equipment. that just gets left out in the middle of. nowhere and the brakes don't get. maintained and somebody was supposed to. service something and they didn't you. know. and so you imagine okay we've got this. vehicle that can drive itself which is. going to require a whole lot of sensors. to tell it that like the doors are still.

closed and the trailer's still hooked up. and each of the tires has adequate. pressure and you know any number of you. know probably hundreds of sensors that. are going to be sort of relaying. information. and one of them. you know after 500 000 miles or whatever. goes out. now you know do we have some fleet of. technicians sort of continually cruising. the highways and sort of servicing these. things as they do what pull themselves. off to the side of the road and say i've. got a sensor fault i'm pulling over you. know or maybe there's some level of like.

critical safety critical faults or or. whatever um. it might be. so you know that. suggests that there might be a role for. tele operation even with self-driving. and when i push people on it in in the. conversations they all are like yeah we. kind of have that on the like bottom of. the list. figure out how to rescue truck you know. it gets. on the to-do list right after solving. the self-driving you know question is. like yeah what do we do with the.

problems right i mean now we could we. can imagine like all right we have some. you know protocol that the truck is not. you know realizes the system says not. safe for operation pull to the side. good you have a crash but now you got a. truck stranded on the side of the road. you're gonna send out somebody to like. calibrate things and check out what's. going on or that sounds like expensive. labor it sounds like downtime it sounds. like the kind of things that shippers. don't like to happen to their freight. you know in a in a just-in-time world.

and so wouldn't it be great if you could. just sort of you know loop your way into. the. controls of that truck and say all right. we've got a sensor out says me that says. that the tire is bad but i can see. visually from the camera looks fine i'm. going to drive it to our next depot you. know maybe the next rider or penske. location right sort of all these service. locations around and have a tech nation. technician take a look at it so. tally operation often gets this you know. um. dismissive. um. you know commentary from from other.

folks working on other other scenarios. but i think it's it's potentially more. relevant than than than we hear publicly. but it's a hard problem. and uh. you know for me. i've gotten a chance to interact with. people that take on hard problems and. solve them and they're rare what tesla. has done. with their data engine. so i thought autonomous driving cannot. be solved. without collecting a huge amount of data.

and organizing the wall not just. collecting but organizing it. and exactly what tesla is doing now is. what i thought it would be like i. couldn't see car companies doing that. including tesla. and now that they're doing that it's. like oh okay so it's possible to take on. this huge effort seriously to me. teleoperation is another huge effort. like that. it's like taking seriously. what happens when it fails. what's the in the case of waymo for um. for the consumer like ride sharing.

what's the customer experience like. there's a bunch of videos online now. where people are like the car. fails and it pulls off to the side and. you call like customer service and. you're basically sitting there for a. long time and there's confusion and then. there's a rescue that comes and they. start to i mean just the whole. experience is a mess that has a ripple. effect. to how you trust in in the entirety of. the experience but like actually taking. on the problem of that failure case. and revolutionizing that experience both.

for trucking and for ride sharing that's. an amazing opportunity there because. that. feels like it would change everything. if you can reliably know when the. failures happen which they will you have. a clear plan that doesn't significantly. affect the efficiency of the whole. process. that that could be the game changer. and if tele operation is part of that it. could be just like you're saying it. could be tele operation or it could be. like a fleet of rescuers that can come. in which is a similar idea but tell the.

operation obviously. that allows you to. to just have a network of monitors of. people monitoring this giant fleet of. trucks and taking over when needed it's. a beautiful vision of the future where. there's millions of robots. and only thousands of humans monitoring. those millions of robots. that seems like. that seems like a perfect dance. of allowing humans to do what they do. best and allowing robots to do what they.

do best. yeah yeah so i mean i think there are um. and we just applied for an nsf we didn't. get. anybody's watching. but with some folks from wisconsin who. do teleoperation right and and you know. some of this is used for like rovers and. you know i mean really you know high. stakes difficult problems but one of the. things we wanted to study were these. mines in these rio tinto mines in. australia where they remotely pilot the. trucks and there's some autonomy i guess.

and then some but it's overseen by. um a remote operator and they. you know it's a it's a it's near perth. it's quite remote and um. they retrained the truck drivers to be. the remote operators right um there's. autonomy in in the port of rotterdam and. places like that where there are jobs. there and so there i think. you know maybe we'll get to this later. but you know there's a real policy. question about sort of. who's gonna lose and what we do about it. and you know whether or not we there are.

opportunities there that you know maybe. we need to put our thumb on the scale a. little bit to to make sure that you know. there there's some give back to the. community that's that's taking the hit. you know um so for instance if there. were tally operation centers you know. maybe they go in these communities that. we disproportionately source truck. drivers from today now i mean what does. that mean it may not be the cheapest. place to do it if they don't have great. connectivity and it may not be where the. upper level managers want to be and you. know places like that you know issues.

like that right so. um i do think it's an interesting. question you know both from sort of a. practical. uh scenario situation of how it's going. to work but also from a policy. perspective so there's platoons there's. tele operation. and this is. taking care of some of the highway. driving that we're talking about is. there other ideas like. um. is there other ideas scenarios that you. have for autonomous trucks yeah so i. mean the the most obvious one actually.

is is just you know uh facility to. facility right the sort of you know um. it can't go everywhere but a lot of. logistics facilities are very close to. interstates and they're and they're on. big commercial roads without you know. bikes and parked cars and all that stuff. and some of the jobs that i think are. really first on the chopping block. are these ltl that less than truckload. what's called line haul right so these. are the drivers who go from terminal to. terminal with those full trailers.

and those facilities are often located. strategically to avoid congestion. right and to be in big you know. industrial facilities so. you could imagine that being you know. the first place you see a waymo. self-driving you know truck roll out. might be you know um sort of direct. facility to facility for ups or fedex or. less than truckload care and the idea. there is fully driverless so potentially. not even a driver in the truck it's just.

going from facility to facility. empty zero occupancy yeah and those. because that labor is expensive uh you. know they don't keep those drivers out. overnight those drivers do do a run back. and forth typically um or in a team go. back and forth in in one day. so from the people you've spoken with uh. so far what's your sense how far are we. away from which scenarios closest and. how far away are we from that scenario. of autonomy. being a big part of our trucking fleet.

most folks are are focused on another. scenario which is the exit to exit right. um which looks like that urban truck. ports um. thing that i laid out earlier you know. so you have a human driven truck that. comes out to um a drop lot it meets up. with an autonomous truck the. that truck then you know drives it on. the interstate to another lot. and then a human driver. you know picks it up. there are a couple variations maybe on.

that um. so. or let me just run through the last two. scenarios sure. the other thing you could do right is to. say all right i've got a truck that can. drive itself um and i i refer to this. one as autopilot but um. you know you have a human drive it out. to the interstate but rather than have. that. transaction where where the human driven. truck detaches the trailer and it gets. coupled up to a self-driving truck. they just that human driver just hops on.

the interstate with that truck and goes. in back and goes off duty. while the truck drives itself and and so. you have a self-driving truck that's not. driverless right um and just to clarify. because tesla uses the term autopilot so. the airplanes and so everybody uses the. word autopilot we're referring to. essentially full autonomy but because. it's exit to exit the truck driver is. on board the truck but they're sleeping. in the back or whatever yeah and this. this gets to the really weedy policy.

questions right so basically for the. department of transportation for you to. be off duty for safety reasons you have. to be completely relieved of all. responsibility. so that truck has to not you know. encounter a construction. site or what inclement weather or. whatever it might be. and and call to you and say hey you know. or i mean obviously right we're. imagining connected vehicles as well. right so. you're in a self-driving truck you're in. the back and trucks 20 miles ahead. experience some problem right um that.

may require tele operation or whatever. it is right and it signals to your truck. hey you know tell the driver 20 miles. ahead he's he's got to hop in the seat. that would mean that they're on duty. according to the way that the current. rules are written they have some. responsibility and part of that is you. know we need we need them get rest right. um they need to have uninterrupted. sleep so. that's what i call autopilot the the. final. scenario. is one that i i thought was actually the.

one scenario that was good for labor. um you know uh which i which i i i. proposed because i'm like well here's. here's an idea you know that would be. like actually good for workers um and. just. another. brief aside here um. the history of trucking over the last. you know 40 years there's been a lot of. technological change so when i. learned to drive the truck i had to. learn to manually shift it like i was. describing you had to read these fairly. complicated you know big sets of.

laminated maps to figure out where the. truck can go and where it couldn't which. is a big deal you know when you take. these trucks on the wrong road and. you're destroying a bridge or you're. doing a can opener which is where you. try to drive it under about too low. you've probably seen that on on youtube. if not you know check it out you know. truck can opener um you know there's. some bridges that are famous for it. right and there's one i think called the. can opener. you can find on youtube. um. and you know you had to log those hours. like manually and sort of do do the math.

and and plan your work routine. and i would do this every day i'd say. like okay i'm going to get up at 5. i. got to think about buffalo and there's. traffic there so i want to be through. buffalo by 6 30 you know and then. that'll put me you know in in cleveland. at you know 9 30. which means i'll miss that rush hour. right which is going to put me in. chicago you know and and so you do this. and. now today you know 15 years later truck. drivers don't have to do any of that um.

you know you don't have to shift the. truck you don't have to map um you know. you can figure out the least congested. route to go on and your hours of service. are recorded or a good portion of them. are reported. automatically. all of that has been a substantial. de-skilling that has you know put. downward pressure on rage wages and. allowed companies to kind of speed up. monitor and direct i mean the the key. technology you know that i did work.

under is satellite linked computers so. before you could kind of go out and plan. your own work and the boss really. couldn't see what you were doing and. push you and say you know you've been on. break for 10 hours why aren't you moving. you know um and you might tell them. you know because i'm tired you know like. i didn't sleep well i've got to get a. couple more hours you know they're only. going to accept that so many times or at. least some of those dispatchers are so. all this technology has has made the job. sort of you know de-skilled the job you. know hurt drivers in the labor market. made the work worse.

so. i think the burden is really on. the technologists who are like oh this. will make truck driver jobs better and. sort of envision ways that it would it's. like. the burden's really a proof is really on. you to sort of really clearly lay out. what that is going to look like because. it's 30 or 40 years of history suggests. that that technology into labor markets. where workers are really weak. and cheap is what wins. that new technology doesn't help workers.

or raise their wages. so lowers the bar of entry in terms of. skill yeah. so. that's that's really interest that's um. that's tough that's tough to know to do. with because yeah from a technology. perspective you want to make the life of. the people doing the job today easier is. it. is that what you want no but that like. when you think about like what. exactly because the reality is.

you will make the their life potentially. a little bit easier. but that will allow the companies to. then hire people that are less skilled. it will get those people that are. previously working there fired or lower. wages and so the result of this easier. is a lower quality of life yeah that's. dark actually i know i'm sorry. but you're you were saying that was for. you initially the hopeful. oh no so i'll i'll get to that but one. more thing because this this is not.

stopping right and this is another. interesting question about the sort of. automation and i think uber. right is is a is an interesting example. here right where it's like okay if we. had self-driving trucks or self-driving. cars right we could we could automate. you know what what used to be taxi. service. there's a whole bunch of stuff that's. already been automated like the. dispatching so the dispatchers are. already out of work in in rideshare and. the payment is already automated right. so so you have to automate steps like. this so you have to have you know that. initial link to dispatch the truck you.

have to have the you know the automated. mapping and all so we've sort of done. all this you know incremental automation. right that could make the truck um. completely driverless. there's some important things happening. right now with the remaining good jobs. so. what you're really paying for when you. get a good truck driver is you know like. i said you get those kind of local. skills of like backing and congested. traffic those. it's really impressive to watch and. there's some value on it certainly but.

it's relatively low value um in in the. actual driving technique right so. you bump something you know back into. the dock it's you know it might be a. couple thousand dollars because you ruin. a canopy or something over a dock or. tear up a trailer. what you really want those those highly. skilled. conscientious drivers and that's really. what it what it is and that's what. computers are really good at is about. being conscientious right in the sense. of like they pay attention continually. right and and how it was describing.

those those long-haul segments where the. driver you know just keeps out of the. the situations that could become. problematic right and just they don't. look at their phone and they take the. job seriously and they're safe and you. can give somebody a skills test right in. in you know as a cdl examiner you could. take them out and say all right i need. you to go around these cones and like. drive safely through this school zone. but what really proves that you're a. safe driver is two years without an. accident right because that means that.

day after day hour after hour mile after. mile you did the right thing right um. and not when it was like oh some. situation's emerging but just. consistently over time kept yourself out. of accident situations and you can see. this with drivers who are you know a. million or two million safe miles. the value of those drivers for walmart. is they don't run over minivans. the company i ran i worked for they ran. over minivans on a regular basis so you. know when i when i was trained they said. we kill 20 people a year.

we send someone to the funeral there's a. big check involved. um don't be that you know we don't want. to go to your funeral and you don't want. to be the person who. who caused that funeral. okay so they they just write that off. okay that's just part of the business. model now. um forward collision avoidance. can. you know basically eliminate the vast. majority of those accidents.

that's what the value of a really. expensive conscientious driver is based. on they don't run over minivans so as. soon as you have that forward collision. avoidance. what's going to happen to the wages of. those drivers. by way of a therapy session help me. understand. it is a. collision avoidance. um. automated collision avoidance systems. are they good or bad for society. yeah i mean. you know this this is.

they're good. right they're good but. in uh what do we do about the pain. of a workforce in the short term. because their their wages are going to. go down because the job starts requiring. less and less skill. is is it is there a hopeful message here. where other jobs are created. so i'm you know i'm a sociologist right. so you know so i'm going to think about. what's what's the structure behind that. that creates that pain.

right and it's ownership. right um you know we don't call it. capitalism for nothing. you know what capitalists do is they. figure out cheaper more efficient ways. to do stuff and they use technology to. do that oftentimes right this is. the remarkable history of the last. couple centuries and and all the. productivity gains is. you know people who are in a competitive. market saying. if i have to do it right i don't have a. choice because like my competitor over. there is going to eat my lunch if i'm.

not on my game um. i don't have a choice i've got to invest. in this technology to you know make it. more more efficient to make it cheaper. and what do you look for you look for. oftentimes you look for labor costs. right you look for high value labor if i. can take a hundred and. you know these a lot of these truck. drivers make good money hundred thousand. dollars good benefits vacation you know. retirement. if i can replace them with a 35 000. worker when i'm competing with maybe a.

low-wage retail employer rather than. some other more expensive employers for. you know skilled blue collar workers i'm. gonna do that. um and that's just that's what we do. and so i think. those those are the bigger questions. around this technology right is like. you know are workers gonna get screwed. by this like yeah most likely like. that's that's what we do. so one of the things you say is i mean. first of all the numbers of workers that. will be that will feel this pain is not. perhaps as large as the journalists kind.

of articulate but nevertheless the pain. is real. and. i guess. my question here is um. do you have an optimistic vision about. the transformative effects of autonomous. trucks on society. like. if you look 20 years from now. and perhaps see. maybe 30 years from now perhaps see. these autonomous trucks doing the. various. parts of the scenarios you listed and.

there's just hundreds of thousands of. them. just uh like uh like veins like blood. throwing through flowing through veins. on the interstate system. um. what kind of world do you see that's a. better world than today that involves. his trucks yeah um can i defend myself. first because i can i'm reading the. comments right now yes of people you. know of the economists who are telling. you're a commenter. dear phd economics yes um yes d dear phd.

in economics i know that that higher. skilled jobs are created you know by by. technological advancement right i mean. there are big questions about how many. of them right so the idea that we would. create more. um ex you know expensive labor. positions right with a new technology. right you better check your business. plan if your idea is to take you know a. bunch of low um low wage labor and. replace it with the same amount of high. wage labor right so we there's a. question about how many of those jobs.

and there's the really important social. and political question of. are they the same people right and do. they live in the same places and i think. that kind of you know geography is a. huge issue here with the impacts right. lots of rural workers um interesting. politically lots of red state workers. right lots of blue state maybe union. folks who are going to try to slow. autonomy and lots of red state you know. representatives in the house maybe who. want to you know stand up for their for. their trucker constituents um so just.

just to defend myself yeah and to. elaborate i think economics as a field. is not good at measuring the landscape. of human pain and suffering. so you know. sometimes you can forget in the numbers. as real lives that are at stake that's. what i suppose sociology is better at. doing. uh so you try sometimes sometimes well. the problem with i mean i'm somebody who. loves psychology and psychiatry and a. little bit i guess of sociology. i realized how little how.

tragically flawed the field is not. because of lack of trying but just how. difficult the problems are you had to do. really thorough studies that understand. the fundamentals of human behavior and. this yes landscape of human suffering. it's just it's almost an impossible task. without the data and we currently don't. you know not everybody's richly. integrated to where they're fully. connected and all their information is. being uh like recorded for sociologists. to study so you have to make a lot of.

inferences you have to talk to people. you have to do the interviews as you're. doing and through that like really. difficult work try to understand. like uh. hear the music that nobody else is. hearing the music of like what people. are feeling their hopes their dreams and. their the crushing of their dreams due. to some kind of economic forces yeah i. mean we've just lived that for four and. a half years of of probably you know. elites let me just go out on a limb and. say.

not understanding the sort of emotional. and psychological currents of a large. portion of the population right and just. being stunned by it and and confused. right um. wasn't confusing for me. after having talked to truckers again. who. trucking is the job of last resort these. are people who've already lost that. manufacturing job oftentimes already. lost that. construction job to just aging right. so what you know what can we do right. what's sort of the positive vision.

because. like we've got tons of highway deaths. we've got um and just to you know. the big picture. is and this is the opportunity i guess. for investors um. it's a hugely inefficient system. so we buy this truck there's this. low-wage worker in it oftentimes and. again i'm setting aside those really. good line haul jobs in ltl those are. those are a different case um. that low-wage worker is driving a truck. that they they might the wheels might.

roll seven to eight hours a day that's. what the truck is designed to do and. that's what makes the money for the. company. in other seven eight hours a day the. driver's doing other kinds of work that. you know is not driving and then the. rest of the day they're basically living. out of the truck. like you really can't find a more. inefficient use of an asset than than. that right. now a big part of that is we pay for the. roads and we pay for the rest areas and. all that all this other stuff so. so the way that i work and the way that. you know i think about these problems is. i try to find analogies right sort of.

labor processes and things that that. make economic sense you know that. that seem you know in in this in the. same area of of the economy but have. some some different characteristics for. for workers right and and sort of try to. figure out why does the economics work. there. right and so. if you look at those really good. jobs. the mo the most likely way that you as a. as a passenger car driver would know. that it's one of those drivers is that.

they're multiple trailers. right so you see these like maybe maybe. it's three small trailers maybe it's two. sort of medium-sized trailers some. places you might even see two really big. trailers together. you do that because labor's expensive. right and it's highly skilled and so you. use it efficiently and you say all right. you know rather than having you you know. haul that little trailer out of the. ports you know that sort of half size. container we're going to wait till we. get three or we're gonna coordinate the. movement so that they're three ready you. go do what truckers call make a set you.

put them together right and you and you. go um that's a massive productivity gain. right because you know you're hauling. two three times as much freight so the. the positive scenario that i threw out. in in 2018. was why not have. a human-driven truck. with a self-driving truck that follows. it right just a drone unit um. and. it was you know. to me this seemed as a you know. non-computer scientist as a sociologist.

right this made a lot of sense because. when i got done talking to the you know. the computer scientists and and the. engineers they were like well you know. it's like object recognition decision. making algorithm all this stuff it's. like all right so why don't you leave. the human brain. in the lead. vehicle right you got all that. processing and then. all that following now again this is. sort of me being a um a lay person you. know i said why don't you know then that. following truck right takes direction. from the front it uses the rear of the. trailer as a reference point it.

maintains the lane you've got. cooperative adaptive cruise control and. that you double the productivity of that. driver you solved that problem that i. that i i hated in in my you know urban. truck ports thing about the bridge. weight because when you get to the. bridges you know the the two trucks can. just spread out just enough to make the. bridge weight right and you can just. program that in and you know they're 50. feet further apart 100 feet further. further apart um. so interesting sort of i think uh.

story about this that that leads to kind. of i think the policy questions. in. i guess 2017 jack reed and susan collins. and you know requested from the senate. the senate requested research on what. the impacts of self-driving trucks would. be and the first stage of that was for. the gao to um. do a report sort of looking at the lay. of the land talking to some experts. and i was working on my 2018 report um.

helped contribute to that gao report. and. you know i had the six scenarios right. i'm like okay you know here's here's. what starsky's doing you know here's. what embark and and uber are doing you. know here's what waymo might be doing no. nobody really knows right um here's what. peloton's doing. um you know here's the autopilot. scenario and then here's this one that i. think. actually could be good for drivers so. now you've got that driver who's got two.

you know two times the freight. um their decisions are more important. they're managing a more complex system. right they're probably gonna have to. have some global understanding of how to. you know the environments in which you. can operate safely right now we're. talking upskilling right. and so. you know. that um the gao. you know sort of writes up these. different scenarios and and the idea is. that it's going to prepare for this. department of transportation department. of labor. set of processes to engage stakeholders.

and um. and sort of get you know get industry. perspectives and then do a study on the. labor impacts. so. you know that dot. dol process starts to happen and. you know. i get to the workshop. and a friend was sitting at the table. next to me. and he holds up the the scenarios that. that they're going to have us discuss at. this workshop and he's like hey these. look really familiar right because they. were the you know scenarios from from.

the report but there were only five. instead of six interesting. the sixth scenario which was the. upskilling labor good for good for. worker scenario. wasn't wasn't discussed so to clarify. that the integral piece of technology. there is platooning. yeah i mean in a sense it's it's. platooning but and i and in fairness. right the. as i pitched that idea or sort of ran. that idea by. the computer scientists and engineers. that i would and product managers that i.

would talk to they would say. you know. you know we thought about that but that. following truck. it's not that simple you know that thing. basically we had to engineer that to be. capable of. independent self-driving because what if. there was a cut in or you know any. number of scenarios in which it lost. that connection to the lead truck for. whatever reason now i mean i don't. platooning is hard. there's edge cases i guarantee the.

number of edge cases and platooning is. orders of magnitude lower than the. number of edge cases. in the general. solo full self drive you do not need to. solve the full self-driving problem. i mean if you're talking about. uh probability of dangerous events yeah. it just seems with platooning then. like you can deal with cut-ins. yeah so this is you know this is beyond. uh this is one of the challenges. obviously of being a researcher who you. know uh doesn't doesn't really have any.

background in in the technology right um. so i can i can dream this up i don't you. know no idea if it's feasible um well. let me speak you spoke to the phds in. economics let me speak to the pgs of. computer science if you think platooning. is as hard as the full self-driving. problem. um. well we need to talk because i think. that's ridiculous i think platooning. and in fact i think platooning is an. interesting idea for. ride sharing as well for the general. autonomous driving problem not just. trucking but obviously trucking is the.

big big benefit because the number of a. to b points in trucking is much much. lower than the general ride sharing. problem but anyway i think it's a great. idea but you're saying it was removed. yeah and and so you you can go you know. and you know listeners could go to these. reports they're they're they're publicly. available and they explain why in the in. the footnote. and you know they they note that there. was this other scenario um suggested by. at least me and i remember if they said. someone else did too. but they said you know we didn't include.

it because no developers. were working on it interesting full. disclosure. that was the approach that i took in my. research right which was to go to the. developers and say what's your vision. right what are you trying to develop. that's what i was trying to do and maybe. you know and then i tried to think. outside the box at the end by adding. that one right like here's one that i. have you know people aren't talking. about that could be cool now again it. had been proposed like 2014 for like. fuel convoys um so you could just have.

like one super armored lead fuel. truck right in a you know bringing fuel. to forward operating bases in. afghanistan and then you wouldn't need. you know the the super heavy you know. you wouldn't have to protect the human. life in the following trials so that's. interesting you're saying like when you. talk to waymo when you talk to these. kinds of companies they weren't at least. openly saying they're working on this so. then it doesn't make sense to um. to include in the list yeah and so but. here's the thing right this is the. department of transportation right and.

the department of labor. maybe they could consider some scenarios. like maybe we could say you know this we. this technology's got a lot of potential. here's what we'd like it to do. you know we'd like it to reduce highway. deaths help us fight climate change. reduce congestion you know all these. other. other things but that's not how our. policy conversation our own technology. is happening we're not. and people don't think that we should. and i think that's the fundamental shift. that we need to have right i've been. involved with this a little bit like. nitsa and d.o.t.

the approach they took is saying we. don't know what the heck we're doing so. we're going to just let the innovators. do their thing and not regulate it for a. while just to see. you don't you think that's um. you think dot should provide ideas. themselves well so this is the um. this is the great trick. in policy of um of private actors. is you you get narrow mandates for. government agencies right so you know. this the safety case will be handled by.

organizations whose mandate is safety so. the federal motor carrier safety. administration who is you know going to. be a key player. i i argue in an article that i wrote you. know they're going to be a key player in. actually determining which. scenario is most profitable by setting. the rules for truck drivers their. mandate is safety. right now they have lots of good people. there who want you know who care about. truck drivers and who wish truck drivers. jobs were better. but they don't have the authority to say.

hey we're going to write this rule. because it's good for truck drivers. right and so when you. you know we need. to say you know as a society we need to. not restrict technology not stand in the. way of things we need to harness it. towards the goals that matter. right not whatever comes out the end of. the pipeline because it's the easiest. thing to develop or whatever is most. profitable for the first actor or. whatever but you know and we do the. thing is we do that right i mean like.

when we when we sent people to the moon. you know we we did that we you know and. there were tremendous benefits that that. followed from it right and and we do. this all the time in you know trying to. cure cancer or whatever it is right i. mean we can. do this. right now the interesting sort of. uh epilogue to that story is. you know uh six months or so i don't. know how long it was after those those. meetings in which that sixth scenario. was not considered um.

a company called location. you know ends up. using that. essentially that basic scenario with it. with a slight variation so they they. leave the human driver in both trucks. and then that following driver goes off. duty and then um. uh you know i i've been trying to think. of what the term is they kind of i i. think of it as like slingshotting they. sort of when one runs out of hours you. know the one who's off duty goes up. front and you know um cool and so. you know if only they had been.

uh you know. around six six months earlier that would. it might have been considered by d.o.t. but it just says you know who has the. authority to propose what these visions. of the future are well some of it is. also just the company stepping up and. just doing it. screw the authority and showing that. it's possible and then the authority. follows so that's why i really. love innovators in the space the the. criticism i have the very sort of. real i don't know harsh criticism i have.

towards autonomous vehicle companies in. the space. is. they've gotten culturally. they've it's been it's become acceptable. somehow. to do demos and videos. as opposed to the old-school american. way of solving problems. there's there's a culture in silicon. valley where you're talking to vcs. that have lost that kind of. love of um.

solving problem they kind of like. envision if the story you told me in. your powerpoint presentation it's true. how many trillions of dollars might i be. able to make there's something lost in. that conversation where you're not. really taking on like. the problem in a real way so these. autonomous vehicle companies realize we. don't need to we just need to make nice. powerpoint presentations and not. actually deliver products that like. everybody looks outside and says holy. this is this is life-changing.

that's where i have to give props to. waymo is they put driverless cars on the. road. and like. forget powerpoint slide presentations. actual cars in the world then you can. criticize like is that actually going to. work who knows but the thing is they. have cars on the road that's why i have. to give props to tesla they have. whatever you want to say. about risk and all those kinds of things. they have cars on the road that have. some level of automation and soon they. have. trucks on the road as well and that kind.

of that. component i think is important part of. the policy conversation because you get. you start getting data of these from. these companies that are willing to take. the big risks as opposed to making slide. decks they're actually putting cars on. the road and like real lives are at. stake they could be lost and they could. bankrupt the company if they make the. wrong decisions and that that's deeply. admirable to me speaking of which i have. to ask way more trucks i think it's. called waymo.

via so i'm talking to the head of. trucking at waymo i don't know if you've. gotten a chance to interact with them. what's a good question to ask the guy. what's the good question of waymo. because they seem to be. one of the leaders in the space they. have the zen-like calm of like being. willing to stick. with it for the long term in order to. solve the problem. yeah they and i guess they have that. luxury right um. which i don't think i. if i had another life as a researcher i.

would love to just study the business. strategies of startups and and silicon. valley. um sort of structure would you consider. waymo startup no no no right i mean it's. at least not in the things that seem to. matter in the self-driving space so you. mentioned the demos um you know and i. don't i don't have enough data as a. sociologist to really say like oh this. is why they do what they do um but you. know my hypothesis is you know there's a.

real scarcity of talent and money um for. this and there certainly was a scarcity. of like partnerships with oems and you. know the big trucking companies and. there was a race for it right and the. way that if you don't have. you know the backing of alphabet um. you you do a demo right and and you get. a few more good engineers who say hey. look they did that cool thing yeah like. anthony lewandowski did with otto and. that would resulted in the uber purchase. of that that program.

um. so what would i what would i ask i mean. i think. i would ask a lot of questions but well. there's also on record and off record. conversations which unfortunately. i'm asking for an on-racket conversation. and that i don't know. if if um these companies are willing to. have interesting unreacted conversations. yeah. i mean i assume that i like there are. questions that i don't think you'd have. to ask like i assume they're gonna be. actually driverless right they're not. gonna like keep the driver in there yeah.

um. so i mean for the industry i think it. would be interesting to know. where they where they see that first. adopter right oh you mean from like the. scenarios that laid out which one are. they going to take on yeah i mean. because that's gonna again it's those. really expensive good jobs right so. those ltl jobs the like ups jobs now. that's going to be that's where labor is. too right that's where the teamsters are. that's the only place they are left. right um so that's that's going to be. the big. fight on the hill and public if if labor.

can muster it right i don't know um. there's a really cool. like um. one thing i would recommend to to you. and your listeners if you really want to. see some like a remarkable page in sort. of the history of. labor and automation there's a. a report that harry bridges who was um. the socialist leader of the the. longshoremen on the west coast and just. you know galvanized that union and they. they still control the ports today. because of. this vision that he laid down.

in the 1960s. he put out a photojournal report called. men and machines. and basically what it was was it was an. internal education campaign. to convince the membership that they had. to go along with automation. machines were coming for their jobs and. what the photo journal it's almost like. 100 pages or something like that is like. here's how we used to do it some of you. old-timers remember it like we used to. take the barrels olive oil and we'd. stack them in the hold and we'd roll.

them by hand and we'd put the timber in. and we you know stack the crates tight. you know and and that was the pride of. the longshoremen was a was a tight stow. and now you all know you know their. cranes that come down and there's no. longer any you know rope slings and. we're loading bulldozers into the hole. to push the ore up into piles and then. clamshells are coming down and. and. he made this case to them and he said. this is why we're signing this agreement. to basically allow. the employer to.

automate. and we're going to lose jobs but we're. going to get a share of the benefits. and so our wages are going to go up. we're going to continue to control the. hiring and training of workers. our numbers are gonna go down but you. know basically that last son of a. who's working at the ports he's gonna be. one. one really well paid son of a you. know. it may just be one standing but he's. gonna love his job. um you should check out that report. that's an interesting vision of a future. that probably still holds.

that is i mean there is some level to. which you have to embrace the automation. yeah i mean who gets you know the. benefits right it's like. i mean think of the public dollars that. went into developing self-driving. vehicles in the early days right not. just the vision of it right which was a. public vision to to you know take. soldiers out of harm's way. um but. you know uh a lot of money and there's. some way if you are a business that's. leveraging that technology. from a broad.

historical ethical perspective you do. owe it. to. the bigger community. to pay back. like. for. all the investment that was paid to to. make that technology a reality in some. sense i don't i don't know how to make. that right right. on one. there's this pure capitalism and then. there's uh communism and i'm not sure. uh.

i'm not sure how how to get that. balance right you know i don't i don't. have all the answers in here you know. and i don't i wouldn't expect you know. um individual private companies to to. kind of kick back right that's. capitalism doesn't allow that right. unless you have a huge monopoly right um. and then you can on the back side create. music halls and libraries and things. like that. but you know here's what i think you. know the the. the basic obligation is. is you know come to the table. like and and have an honest conversation.

with the policy makers with the truck. drivers you know with the communities. that are are at risk like at least let's. talk about these things you know. in a way that doesn't look like the way. lobbying works right now where where you. send a well-paid lobbyist to the hill to. you know convince some. representative or senator to stick a. sentence or two in that favors you into. like let's have a real conversation real. human can we just do that yeah don't. play games.

real real human conversation let me ask. you um mention autopilot gotta ask you. about tesla. this renegade little company that seems. to be from my perspective. revolutionizing autonomous driving or. semi-autonomous driving or at least the. problem of. perception and control. they've got a semi on the way. they got a truck on the way what are. your thoughts about tesla semi you know. i um and i did have. some very preliminary conversations with.

um. with uh you know policy folks there um. you know nothing really in in the tech. or business side of it too much um and. here's why i think because. electrification and autonomy run in. opposite directions right um and i just. you know um i don't see the application. the value in self-driving for the truck. that tesla's going to produce in the. near term. you know they're just you're not going. to have the battery. um now you could have wonderful safety.

systems and you know reinforcing you. know the auto. you know self-driving features. supporting a skilled driver um. but you're not going to be able to pull. that driver out for long stretches the. way that you are with driverless trucks. so. do you think. i mean the reason so yeah the. electrification. is not obviously coupled with the. automation. [Music]. they have a very interesting approach to.

semi-autonomous. pushing towards autonomous driving. right it's very unique. no lidar. now no radar. it's computer vision alone. from a large they're collecting huge. amounts of data from a large fleet it's. an interesting unique approach. bold and fearless in this direction if i. were to guess. whether this approach would work i would. say. no. it started. one you would need way a lot of data and.

two. because you have actual cars deployed on. the road using. a beta version of this product you're. going to. have a system that's. far less safe you're going to run into. trouble it's horrible pr like it just. seems like a nightmare uh but it seems. to not be the case at least up to this. point it seems to be. uh not you know on par if not safer and. it seems to work really well and human. the human factor somehow.

um manages. like drivers still pay attention now. there's a selection of who is inside the. tesla autopilot. user base right there could be a. self-selection mechanism there but. however it works. these things are not running off the. road all the time. so it's very interesting whether that. can sort of creep into the trucking. space. yes. at first the long-haul problem. is not solved they need to charge but. maybe you can solve you know a lot of.

your scenarios involved. small. distances. and you know that last mile. aspect which is exactly what tesla is. trying to solve for the. hum uh for the. for the regular uh passenger vehicle uh. space is the city driving it's possible. that you have these trucks. it's it's almost like. yeah you you solve the uh the last mile. delivery part of some of the scenarios. that you mentioned.

in autonomous driving space is that do. you think that's from the people you've. spoken with too difficult of a problem. the the thing that you know keeps me. so interested in this space and thinking. that it's so important you know is is. again that. that efficiency question that safety. question and the and the way that these. economics can push us potentially you. know toward a more efficient system so i. want to see those tesla electric trucks. running out to those truck ports where. you're where you've got those two you.

know um two trucks with a human driver. in front yeah right um you know i think. that's now what's powering those is that. hydrogen you know i mean i don't you. know. again it's very interesting as a. researcher who does not have a. background in technology it doesn't have. a have a horse you know in this in this. race i mean you know for all i know. self-driving trucks will ultimately be. achieved by some biomechanical sensor. that uses echolocation because we took. stem cells of bats right you know i mean. i know you know i i don't i am.

completely um. unable to assess who's you know who's. that or who's behind her who makes sense. but but i think one key component there. and this is what i see with tesla often. and it's it's quite sad to me that other. companies don't do this enough. is is that first principles thinking. like wait wait okay it's looking at the. inefficiencies as opposed to. i worked with quite a few car companies. and they basically have a lot of. meetings there's a lot of meetings.

and uh the discussion is like how can we. make this cheaper this cheaper this. cheaper this component cheaper this. cheaper. the cheapification of everything just. like you said. as opposed to saying wait a minute let's. step back. let's look at the entirety of the. inefficiencies in the system. like why have we been doing this like. this for the last few decades. like start from scratch can this be 10x. 100x cheaper like if we. not just. decrease the the cost of one component.

here or this component here or this. component here but like. let's like redesign everything let's uh. infrastructure let's have special lanes. or in terms of truck ports as opposed to. having regular human control truck ports. have some kind of weird. like like sensors like where everything. about the truck. uh. connecting at that final destination is. automated fully from the ground up you. build the facility from the ground up.

for the autonomous truck um all all. those kinds of sort of questions or. platooning let's say wait a minute okay. i know we think platooning is hard but. can we think through exactly why it's. hard and can we actually solve it like. if we collect a huge amount of data can. we solve it. and then tell teleoperation. like okay yeah yeah it's difficult to. have good signal but can we actually can. we have can we consider the the the. probability of those edge cases and what.

to do in the edge cases when the tail. operation fails like how difficult is. this what are the costs how do we. actually construct a uh teleoperation. center full of humans that are able to. pay attention to a large fleet where the. average number of vehicles per human is. like 10 or 100. you know like. having that conversation as opposed to. kind of. having you know you show up to work and. say all right. it seems like uh you know because of. kovid we you know are not making as much.

money can we have a cheaper can we give. less salary to the trucker and can we uh. uh build like uh um. decrease the cost or. decrease the frequency at which we buy. new trucks. and when we do buy new trucks make them. cheaper by making them crappier like. this kind of discussion this is why to. me it's like tesla is like rare on this. and so there's some sectors in which. innovation is part of the culture in the. automotive sector for some reason it's. not as much.

um this is obviously the problem that. ford and gm are struggling with it's. like they're really good at making cars. at scale cheap. and they're like legit good like toyota. at this they're some of the greatest. manufacturing people in the world right. that's incredible but then. when it comes to hiring software people. they're horrible so. it's it's culture and then it's such a. difficult thing for them to sort of. embrace but greatness requires that they. embrace this.

embrace whatever is required to remove. the inefficiency from the system and. that may require you to do things very. differently that you've done in the past. yeah i mean there are certain. things that the market can do well in my. you know this is how i see the world. right um is you know and there. that's the best way to to to organize. certain kinds of activities is the. market and and private interest. but i i think we go too far in in some. areas. transportation is if we can't.

have a public debate about. the roads that we all pay for. um. you forget about it private factories. and know all these other you know. healthcare and other places it's going. to be way harder um there healthcare i. guess has some you know some some uh. some direct contact with the consumer. where we're probably gonna have lots of. um sort of hands-on public policy about. you know concerns around patient rights. and things like that but. if we can't figure out how to have a.

public policy conversation around how. technology is going to reform our public. you know roadways and our transportation. system like we're you know we're really. leaving way too much to private. companies it's just it's not it's not in. there. i get asked this question like what. should companies do and i'm like you. know just go about doing what you're. doing you know i mean please come to the. table and talk about it but it's not. their role i mean i appreciate you know. uh elon's you know attempts to sort of.

you know have species level goals you. know like oh you know we're gonna go to. mars i mean that's amazing and that's. incredible that that someone can realize. you know that you know. have a chance at realizing that vision. it's amazing right but. when it comes to so many areas of our. economy you know we can't wait for a. hero um you know we we have to have and. they're way too many interests involved. you know it's who builds the roads who. you know i mean the the money that.

sloshes around on capitol hill to decide. what happens in in these infrastructure. bills and the transportation bill is. just obscene. right see i think so it's an interesting. view of markets. correct me if i'm wrong let me let me. propose a theory to you. that progress in the world is made by. heroes and the markets removed the. inefficiencies from the work the heroes. did. so going to mars from the perspective of. marcus.

probably has no value. maybe you can argue it's good for hiring. to have a vision or something like that. but like those big projects don't seem. to have an obvious value but the world. our world progresses. by those big leaps. and then as after the leaps are taken. then the markets are very good at uh. removing sort of inefficiencies but it. just feels like the autonomous vehicle. space and the autonomous trucking space. requires leaps. it doesn't feel like we can sneak up.

into a good solution that is ultimately. good for labor like for human beings in. the system it feels like some. like uh. probably a bad example but like a henry. four type of character steps in and say. like we need to do stuff completely. differently. um. yeah and i. you said we can't hope for a hero. but it's like no but we can say we need. a hero we need more heroes so if you're.

a young kid right now listening to this. we need you to be a hero it's not like. we need you to start a company that. makes a lot of money no. you need to start a company that makes a. lot of money so that you can uh feed. your family as you become a hero and. take huge risks and potentially go. bankrupt. those risks is how we move society. forward i think maybe there's a romantic. view i don't know i totally disagree you. disagree god damn it i mean i and the. two of us. you're the knowledgeable one no no um no. no i i think it's a it's a matter of.

like do we need those heroes absolutely. i mean i i i saw the you know um the. boosters come down from spacex's rockets. and you know. land nearly simultaneously with my kids. um you know after school one day. and i thought. oh my god like this is. like science fiction has been made real. it's incredible and it's a pinnacle of. human achievement right it's like this.

is what we're capable of. but we need to have. that those heroes oriented we need to. allow them right to orient toward the. right um. toward the goals right we got it climate. change. you know i mean. all the heroes out there. right i mean it's time it's time the. clock is ticking it's pat it's it's past. time i've been working on climate change. issues since. you know the mid 90s. like. i i still remember.

um the first time in 2010 when i got a. grant. to that was completely focused on. adaptation rather than prevention. and just when it when it hit me. that like. wow. like so adaptation versus prevention is. like. acceptance that. yeah there's going to be catastrophic. impact we just need we need to figure. out how do we at least live with that. yeah and you know the grant was like.

okay our agriculture system is going to. move our bread basket is no longer going. to be california it's going to be. illinois what does that mean for truck. transportation so it's like uh. so. in terms of a big philosophical societal. level that's kind of like giving up. yeah in terms of the big heroic actions. yeah you know failures in human history. yeah that's going to be. let's hope not the biggest but. could be. do you so so let me see why i disagree. right um.

henry ford amazing right to sort of. produce cars right daimler to put that. first truck on the road. without the roads right so there's like. we need that innovation there's no doubt. about it and there's r there are rules. for that but there's big public stuff. um that that that sets the stage that's. critical and and you know and what it. really is it's a it's a. sociological problem it's a political. problem it's a social problem we have to. say and we have these screwed up ideas. right so we have this politics right now.

where like everybody feels like they're. getting screwed and someone undeserving. is you know is benefiting when in fact. like you know at least in the middle. right they're huge i i used to teach. this course in rich and poor you know in. economic inequality and i would go. through you know public housing. subsidies in philadelphia um you know. section 8 subsidies um you know and then. i would go through. my housing subsidies for my. mortgage interest deduction and it.

worked out to basically the average. payment for a section 8 housing voucher. in my neighborhood i'm not a welfare. recipient according to the dominant. discourse and so we have this completely. screwed up sense of like where our. dollars go and you know where the who. benefits from the investment and. you know we need to you know we. i don't know that we can do it but you. know if we're gonna. survive we need to figure out. how to have honest conversations where. private interest.

is where we need it to be in fostering. innovation and and you know and. rewarding the people who do incredible. things please you know we we don't want. to squash that. but we need to harness that power to. solve what i think are some pretty big. you know existential problems so you. think there's a like government level. national level collaboration required. for infrastructure projects like. there's we should really. have. large moonshot projects that uh are.

funded by. our governments. at least guided by i mean i think there. are ways to finance them and you know. other things but we got to be careful. right because that that's where you get. all these sort of perverse you know. unintended consequences and whatnot but. if you look at transportation. in the united states and it is the. foundation of of the the you know. manifest destiny economic growth. right that that built the united states. into the the world superpower that it. became and the industrial power that it.

became it rested on transportation right. it was like you know the erie canal i i. grew up a few miles from where they dug. the first shovel full of the erie canal. and everyone thought it was you know. crazy right um but those public. infrastructure projects the the canals. right the railroads yeah they were. privately built but they wouldn't have. been privately built without you know. lincoln funding them essentially and. giving you know the railroads you know. land um in exchange for building them um.

the highway system the the eisenhower. the the payback that the u.s economy got. from the dwight d eisenhower interstate. system is phenomenal right um no private. entity was going to do that. electrification dams water you know. we. we need to do this infrastructure. yeah infrastructure and now more than. ever it's been really upsetting to me on. the covet front. um there's. one of the solutions to kovit which. seems obvious to me.

from the very beginning that nobody is. supposed to. it's one of the only bipartisan things. is. at home testing rapid home testing. there's no reason. why at the government level we couldn't. manufacture hundreds of millions of. tests a month there's no reason starting. in may 2020. and that gives power. to a country that values freedom that. gives power information to each. individual to know whether they have. covert or not. so.

it's possible to manufacture them for. under a dollar. it's like an obvious thing it's kind of. like the roads it's like everybody's. invested let's put. countless tests in the hands of every. single american citizen maybe every. citizen of the world. the fact that we haven't done that. today and there's some regulation stuff. with the fda all the kind of. drag in a feet but there's not actually. a good explanation except. our leaders.

and culturally we've lost the sort of uh. uh not lost but it's a little bit. dormant. the will to do these big projects that. better the world. i still have the hope that when faced. with. uh catastrophic events. the the more dramatic the more damaging. the more painful they are the higher we. will rise. to meet those and that's where the. infrastructure style projects are really. important but.

it's certainly um. a little bit challenging to remain an. optimist in the times of covid because. the response of our leaders has not been. as great and as historic as i would have. hoped. i i would hope that. the actions of leaders in the past few. years in response to kovid. would be ones that are written in the. history books and we talk about it as we. talk about fdr. but sadly i don't know i think the. history books will forget this.

the actions of our leaders. um. let me just to wrap up. autonomy. when you look into the future. are you excited. about. automation in the space of trucking is. it. you know when you go to bed at night. do you see a beautiful. world.

in your vision. that involves autonomous trucks like all. the truckers you've become close with. you've talked to. do you see a better world for them. because of autonomous drugs. damn you lex. you know why because i mean i i want to. be an optimist you know and and i i want. to think of myself i guess as a half. glass bowl kind of person but you know. when you ask it like that and and i. think about you know like.

that when i when i look at the. challenges to. harnessing that for. you know just let's take let's take just. you know labor and and climate right. there there are other issues congestion. etc infrastructure that that are going. to be affected by this you know again. those big transformat transformational. issues i think. it's going to take the best of us. like it's going to take the best of our. our policy. approaches it's going to take you know. we need to start investing in.

building those in rebuilding those. institutions i mean that's what we've. seen in the last four years right and. and that the erosion of that was so. clear in among these truck drivers like. you know when trump you know came in and. said like you know. free trades good for workers like yeah. right you know um. i grew up in the rust belt you know i. watched factory after factory clothes. all of my ancestors worked at the same. factory it's still holding on by a. thread like.

you know the the democratic party told. you know blue collar workers for years i. don't worry about you know free trade. it's not it's not bad for you and i know. the economist will probably get in the. comment box now um you know about how we. look forward to your comments we look. forward to your comments about how free. trade benefits everybody um. but. you know. immigration you know you you go and i'm. you know i think immigration is great. the united the united states benefits. from it tremendously right but there are.

costs right go down to south. philadelphia and find a dry waller. and tell him that immigration hasn't. hurt him right you know go go to these. places where there's competition right. um and and yes we benefit overall but we. have a system that that allows some. people to pay really high costs. um and and trump trump tapped into that. you know and and there was no there was. no you know there's more than that too. obviously and there's there's lots of.

really dark stuff that goes along with. it that you know. you know the sort of racialization of. others and things like that but but he. hit on those core. you know issues that you know if you. were to go back over my trucking. interviews for 15 years you would have. heard those stories over and over and. over again that sense of voicelessness. that sense of powerlessness that sense. that there's no difference between the. democrats and the republicans because. they're all going to screw us over yeah. and that was there you know and you. could just ignore it as long as you want. and tell people don't worry trade's good. for you don't worry immigration is good.

for you as their communities lose. factories and i mean a lot of them were. lost to the south before they were lost. to overseas whatever but um. tapped into that you know we and and. it's there's a fundamental distrust of. you know you look at these like pew. polls on like you know whether people. trust the media right but whether or not. they trust higher education. you know um you know these institutions. that i find magical right i mean you. look at the the the vaccine. research and stuff that you know just. you know. brilliant you know people doing.

incredible things for humanity like you. know the idea that like you know we can. we can take these viruses that you know. used to ravage through the human. population and that we had to be. terrified of. and you know we've we've you know we've. suffered but. you know we have such power now to to to. defend ourselves right. behind these programs right and and to. see those people be like hey i'm not. sure if higher education is good for the. country or not you know it's like.

where where are we you know so we need. to rebuild the faith and trust in those. institutions and have these but we we. need to have honest conversations before. people are gonna poor people are gonna. buy it you know you have ideas for. rebuilding the trust and giving a voice. to the voices so is is the. many of the things we've been talking. about is so. sort of deeply integrated. you think like. this is the trouble i have with people. that work on ai and autonomous vehicles. and so on. it's not just a technology problem.

it's it's this um. human pain problem. it's the uh. the robot essentially silencing the. voice of a human being. because it's lowering their wage making. themselves more and giving them no tools. of how to escape that suffering. is there something um. i mean it even gets into the question of. meaning you know so money is one thing. but it's also. what makes us happy in life you know a.

lot of those. uh. truckers. the set of jobs they've had in their. life were defining to them as human. beings. and so and the question with automation. is is not just how do we have a. a job. that uh gives you money. to feed your family. but also a job that gives you meaning it. gives you pride yeah. and. for me.

the hope the hope is that. ai. and automation will provide other jobs. will be that will be a source of meaning. um but. coupled with that hope is that there. will not be too much suffering in the. transition. and that's not obvious from as from the. people you've spoken with. i mean i think we need to differentiate. between the effects of technology and. the effects of capitalism right and and. they are you know um the the fact that.

workers don't have a lot of power right. um in this system matters now we had a. system right and that's why i would say. you know go to that. you know harry bridger's report bridges. report and you know those were workers. who who had a sense of power. they said you know what we can we can. demand some of the benefits like yeah. automate our jobs away but you know kick. a little down to us right and and we had. in the golden era of american. industrialism in post-world war ii.

that was the that was the contract the. contract was. employers can do what they want in. automation and all these things yeah. sure there's some union rules that that. make things a little you know less. efficient in places but. the key compromise is tie wages to. productivity that's what we did we tied. that's what unions did they tied wages. to productivity kept demand up right it. was good for the economy some economists. think right um and and that's what. you know we need to i think we need to. acknowledge that we we need to.

acknowledge the. the fact that it's not just technology. it's technology in a social. context. in which some people have a lot of power. to determine what what happens. for me i don't have all the answers but. i know what my answer is and my answer. is i i think i started with this you. know. i can learn from every single person. you know. uh did i have to talk to the 200th truck. driver. in my. opinion yes. because i was going to learn something.

from that 200th truck driver. now. people with more power. might talk to none. or they might talk to five and say okay. i got it you know. i. people. are amazing and every one of them has a. life experience and concerns and. you know um. can teach us something. and they're not in the conversation with. him you know and i know this because i'm. the expert you know so i get pulled in.

to these conversations and people want. to know you know what's going to happen. to labor you know it's like well. i try so i try to be a sounding board. and i feel i feel a tremendous weight of. responsibility um you know for that. um. but i'm not those workers. you know and and they may they may. listen to this or you know walk in the. door sometimes it's about me like that. guy's full of that's not what i. think about you know um.

and they don't get heard over and over. and over but in a small way you are. providing a voice to them and that's. kind of the. the. if at scale we apply that empathy and. listening. then we could provide the voice to the. voiceless through our votes through our. money through i mean that's one way to. make capitalism work. at not. making the. the powerless more powerless. is by all of us being a community that. listens to the pain of others and tries.

to minimize that to try to give a voice. to the voiceless give power to the. powerless. i have to ask you on by way of advice. in young people high school students. college students entering this world. full of automation. full of these complex. labor markets markets period what would. you uh what kind of advice would you. give to that person about how to have a. career. how to have a life they can be proud of.

yeah i think you know this is such a. great question i don't um. [Music]. it's okay to quote steve jobs right. always yeah i mean so. and i just heard this recently it was a. commencement speech that he gave and i. can't remember where it was um and he. was talking about you know he you know. he had famously dropped out of school. but continued to take classes right um. and and he took a calligraphy class and.

it influenced the design of the mac and. and sort of fonts and you know just was. was something that he had no. you know sense of what it was going to. be useful for and his lesson was you. know you you can't connect the dots. looking forward you know looking back. you can see all the pieces. that sort of led you to where you ended. up and for me studying truck driving. like i mean i literally went to graduate. school because i was worried about. climate change and like you know i had a. whole other dissertation plan and then.

was like driving home and like i had. read about all this management. literature and sort of like how you get. workers to work hard for my qualifying. exams and then read a popular article on. on satellite linked computers and the. story in the literature was just a sense. of autonomy and and i was like well that. monitoring must affect the sense of. autonomy and it's just this question. that i found interesting and it never in. a million years that i ever thought i. was gonna like study you know spend 15. years of my life studying truck driving.

um. and it was like if you were to map out a. career path in academia or research like. you know you would you would do none of. the things that i that i did that many. people advise me against where like you. can't like go spend a year working as a. truck driver you know like that's crazy. or you know you can't you know spend all. this time trying to write like one huge. book and you know um. if i could just interrupt what what was. the fire that.

got you to take the leap and go and work. as a truck driver and go interview truck. drivers this is what a lot of people. would be incapable of doing just took. took that leap what the heck what the. heck is up with your mind that allows. you to take that big leap so i think. it's probably like. tolkien and. you know i mean i think as a. teenager you know i yeah i sort of uh. adopted some sense of needing to you. know heroically go out in the world and.

and you know um which i've done at. various points in my life and like. looking back in absolutely stupid ways. um that you know where i could have. completely ended up dead and traumatized. my my family including like i took a. couple week trip in the pacific um like. solo trip and a kayak and basically my. kayaking experience up till that you. know point had been you know on a fairly. calm lake and like class one solo trip. on a kayak in the pacific yeah yeah so i. was working i was working on forestry. issues. and we were starting a campaign up in.

really remote british columbia. and i i was like okay if i'm going to. work on this i've got to actually go. there myself and see what this is all. about and see whether it's worth like. devoting my sort of you know life right. now to. and just drove up there with this kayak. and you know put into the pacific and um. it was insane you know like the tides. are huge and you know there was one. point in which i was going down a fjord. and two fjords kind of came up and there. was a cross channel.

and i had hit the timing completely. wrong and the tide was sort of rushing. up like you know rivers in these you. know two fjords and then. coming through this cross channel and. met and created this giant standing wave. that i had to paddle through um and now. actually very recently i've gone out on. white water with some people who know. what the hell they're doing and i. realized like. just how absolutely stupid. and and you know ill-fit i was but. that's just. that i think i've always had that were.

you afraid. when you had that wave before that wave. scared the out of me yeah okay what. about. taking a leap and becoming a trucker. yeah there was some nervousness for sure. i mean and you know i guess my advantage. as an ethnographer is i i grew up in a. a blue collar environment you know again. all my um. ancestors were factory workers so i can. move. through spaces um i i'm really. i feel conf i can become comfortable in.

lots and lots of places you know not. everywhere but you know along class. lines for sort of white you know even. white ethnic workers like that's you. know i can move in those spaces fairly. easily i mean not entirely there was one. there was one time where i was like okay. you know and i grew up around people. worked on cars i've been to drag races. in nascar and um and i've been to you. know colgate university and that's why. and i think that was probably my initial. training was you know being this just. working class kid who ends up in this.

you know sort of blue blood small. liberal arts college and just feeling. like. you know both having the entire world. opened up to me like philosophy and. buddhism and things that i had never. heard of you know and just became. totally obsessed with and just like you. know just following my interest but also. culturally perhaps didn't feel like you. fit in. feeling like just a fish out of water. and just you know but and at the same. time that.

you know sort of drove me in the sense. that. it drove an opening of my mind because i. couldn't understand it you know i was. like i didn't know that this world. existed i don't understand. and i think maybe that's where my real. first step in trying to understand other. people because they were my friends you. know i mean they were my teammates i. played lacrosse in college like you know. i was close to people who came from such. different backgrounds than i did and i. just. i was so confused you know and so i. think i i learned to learn um and then.

you know sort of went from there and. then developed your fascination with. people and the funny thing is. you went from trucking now to autonomous. trucks i mean just speaking of not being. able to connect the dots and. you know your life in the next 10 years. could take very interesting directions. that's very difficult to first of all us. meeting is a funny little. thing given. the things i'm working on with robots. currently but you know it may not relate. to trucks at all.

there's uh. at a certain point autonomous trucks. are just robots. and then it starts getting into a. conversation about the roles of robots. in society yeah and uh. and the roles of humans and robots and. that interplay. is right up your alley. yeah as somebody who deeply cares about. humans and have somehow found themselves. studying robots yeah no it's crazy i. mean even four four or five years ago i. i would if you had asked me if i was.

going to be studying trucking still i. would have said no. and so my advice is i think if i was. gonna give advice you know um is you. know you can't connect the dots looking. forward you just gotta follow what. interests you you know and. and i think we we we downplay right that. when we when we talk to you know kids. especially you know if you have some. bright gifted kid that gets identified. as like oh you could go somewhere then. we're like we feed them stuff and like. we'll learn the piano and learn another. language right to learn robotics um.

and then we tell other kids like oh. learn a trade you know like figure out. what's going to pay well and not that. there's anything against traits i think. everyone should learn like manual skills. to make things i think it's incredibly. satisfying and and wonderful and we need. more of that but also you know tell you. know all kids it's okay to like take a. class in something random that you don't. think you're going to get any economic. return on well because maybe you will. end up going into a trade but that class. that you took in studio art. is going to mean that you know you you.

look at buildings differently right or. you end up sort of putting your own. stamp on you know woodworking you know. and just. i think that's the key is like follow. you know. it's cheesy because everybody says. follow your passion but you know if we. we say that and then we just you know. the the. 90 of what people hear is you know. what's the return on investment for that. you know it's like you're a human being. like things interest you music interests. you literature interests you video games.

interests you like follow it you know go. grab a kayak and go into the go do. something real no don't do that. go do something stupid and uh something. you'll regret a lot later my foremother. thank god she didn't know well let me. ask because uh for a lot of people work. for me it is. quote unquote work is a source of. meaning and at the core of something. we've been talking about. with jobs is. is meaning so the big ridiculous. question what do you think is the. meaning of life.

do you think. work for us humans modern society is as. core to that meaning. is that's and is that something you. think about in in your work sort of the. deeper question of meaning not just. financial well-being and the quality of. life but the deeper search for meaning. yeah um. the meaning of life is love. and. you can find love in your work. um now and i i don't think everybody can.

there are a lot of jobs out there that. just you know you do it for a paycheck. and i think we do have to be. you know honest about that there are a. lot of people who you know don't love. their jobs and you know we don't have. jobs that they're going to love um. you know and and maybe that's not a sort. of realistic you know that's a utopia. right um. but for those of us that have the the. luxury i mean i think you you love what. you do. um. that people say that i i think the key.

you know for real. happiness um is to. love what you're trying to achieve and. maybe you love trying to build a company. and make a lot of money just for the. sake of doing that. but i think the people who you know are. really happy and have great impacts you. know they they love what they do because. it has an impact on the world that they. think is. it expresses that love right um and that. could be you know at. a counseling center that that could be. you know um in your community that could.

be sending people to mars you know. well i also think it doesn't necessarily. the expression of love isn't necessarily. about helping other people directly. there's something about craftsmanship. and skills we've talked about. that's almost like you're celebrating. humanity by. like searching for mastery in the task. in the simple like especially tasks that. people outside me. uh see as menial as is not important. nevertheless.

searching for mastery for excellence in. that task there's something deeply human. to that and also fulfilling. that just like driving a truck. and getting damn good at it. like you know the best who's ever lived. and driving the truck and taking pride. in that. that that's uh deeply meaningful and. also like a real. celebration of humanity and a real show. of love i think for for humanity. yeah.

yeah i just had my floors redone and the. guy who did it was a he's an artist you. know he sanded these old. hundred-year-old floors and made him. look gorgeous and yeah this is craft. that's love right there yeah i mean he. showed us some love the the. you know the product was just like since. his enriching our lives. steve this was an amazing conversation. we've covered a lot of ground your work. just like you said. impossible to connect the dots but i'm. i'm glad you did all the amazing work. you did you're you're exploring human. nature at the core of what of what.

america is the the blue collar america. so thank you for your work thank you for. the care and the love you put in your. work and thank you so much for spending. your valuable time with me. i appreciate it lex i i'm a big fan so. it's just been great to be on. thanks for listening to this. conversation with steve vaseli. to support this podcast please check out. our sponsors in the description. and now let me leave you with some words. from napoleon hill. if you cannot do great things.

do small things. in a great way. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time.