One company is looking to address the worker shortage by changing the life of a long-haul trucker. It’s called Trucksters, and it has created a relay system for road freight transport based on big data and artificial intelligence. 

Traditionally, truckers drive to their destination, unload, and drive back. With Trucksters, a driver meets a coworker who’s taking cargo in the opposite direction, swaps loads, and then drives back. 

Relays occur at monitored exchange locations and by authorization through the Truckster mobile app. Transit times are reduced by 50%. This makes deliveries 20% more cost-efficient. Importantly, it means drivers get to sleep at home more often, as they take shorter shifts, instead of being on the road in their trucks for days or weeks.

Currently, Trucksters operates more than 600 fully loaded trucks and has carried out almost 2,000 relays in the last year.  

And it’s not the only attempt to address the long-haul worker shortage. 

Highway truck automation does the heavy driving

Another trend is automated trucking on the highway leg of a journey — potentially in a dedicated laneway. Human drivers are employed to carry out the more complex suburban-urban segments at the beginning and end of their journey, with truck transfer hub ports set up near highways to manually switch out the trailers. 

Autonomous truck company TuSimple is moving freight on a fully-automated trucking route between the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas in Arizona. This creates seamless movement between rail, and the critical first and last miles. 

One of the most significant advantages of this approach is reducing delivery costs and time. Currently, mandatory hours of service mean that unless two drivers work in tandem, a truck remains idle for more than 60% of the time. 

It’s easy to imagine this approach as a stop-gap between now and full automation for the trucking industry. 

According to research by Aniruddh Mohan and Parth Vaishnav published in Nature, anywhere from 30,000 to 500,000 jobs may be impacted by the full automation of highway trucking. It will also affect truck stops. These currently employ about 70,000 people across the US. They concede that new opportunities at the transfer hubs may replace work hours lost by automation. Assuming a change of role interests truck drivers. 

But there’s another job they might be perfect for — Remote Pod Operator. 

Einride enlists a trick for remote pod operations

Over the weekend at SXSW, Swedish freight technology company Einride introduced the world’s first Remote Pod Operator, long-time trucking veteran Tiffany Heathcott.  

Remote Pod Operators observe and support an Einride Pod operating in automated drive mode, to ensure they run optimally and safely as they ship goods on behalf of Einride’s customers. 

The operators aren’t ‘driving’ the pods remotely. Instead, they provide operational support to multiple pods at a time via their Automated Driving Systems. 

In contrast to conventional trucking, remote operations will be safer, involve more regular hours, and provide operators with a more hospitable work environment.

Einride currently limits these roles to appropriately qualified and experienced truck drivers. But you can imagine a future where remote-controlled trucks offer a potential career to young people interested in things like gaming. 

Yes, there may be an escalating crisis when it comes to finding enough truck drivers, but tech is finding meaningful ways to resolve the problem.