I personally see very limited returns in automating the last mile - local drivers often only make 15-25 dollars an hour, and often its drop and hook (drop one trailer, pick up another) to maximize tractor utilization. In addition, the hours of service rules for intra-state drivers are often much more generous than the federal standard.
In short, it makes sense to spend alot of money to eliminate the big cost - but not to eliminate the little cost.
Really? I thought Teamster unions made that cost higher. My father made much more than that in the early 90s when he drove a truck temporarily for a salary. Unless local drivers aren't unionized?
The average salary for private drivers is much higher:
>> The median annual wage for a trucker that works for a private fleet, such as a truck driver employed by Walmart, is $73,000, according to ATA. The Labor Department pegs the median annual salary for all truck drivers at around $40,000. But it isn't an easy job to fill. There's 1.6 million truck drivers in America. Oct 9, 2015 [0]
Also long-haul trucking is the real goal of Otto [1] not just last-mile. The benefits go well beyond just replacing the driver's salary w/ robots. For example, an automated truck fleet could be heavily optimized by algorithms to take optimal routes, utilize time better, work for multiple warehouses at once by operating as a 'floating' fleet instead of with fixed routes (this is happening already with human drivers, but it's a natural extension of automating the vehicles and would make implementation/optimization far easier). Plus speeds could eventually be increased, less accidents, less breaks (washrooms, food, etc), less human management required, zero turnover, no training, no hiring, etc, etc.
AFAIK There are no national union TL (Truckload) Carriers remaining (I believe CF was the last one), the LTL guys (Yellow, Overnite (now UPS) are often, but not always union.
Private fleet is FWIW a very very different ballgame - Walmart is considered by drivers "best in the industry" to work for - you need IIRC 5 years of driving experience before they'll even look at you.
Most TL drivers do not drive a dedicated route, and operate as a 'floating' fleet - even if you're on a dedicated board, while you might be hauling one customers crap - you're still likely to go to different places every time. Though as a non-dedicated driver, working out of the terminal I was out of, I regularly hauled Gatorade to Phoenix, or Coke to Phoenix, or Sports Authority to the Pacific Northwest. An example week for me was leave out of LA with Sports Authority (from Ontario area, CA) head up to Seattle then return with rolled paper out of Tacoma, or Coastal Oregon.
All of this freight was stuff that needed to move faster than the rail could take it, or where the destination was too far from a railhead, or the run was too short for the rail - or where simply, the company had the business from the customer and it could choose to route it via the railyard or via a truck, and it had an idle truck that needed to move to someplace else so it could haul freight from there.
While I do see a labor savings in automated driving - I dont see it as practical for most drivers - the biggest advantage I see is with expedited team drivers - you could replace one member of the team with the automation, and save some labor from the truck. So long as the automation is driving the open road portions especially at night, that could work out as a win win - you still need a driver to fuel the thing, check tires, open the trailer doors, etc - but perhaps the easier portion of the driving could be handled by the computer.
In short, it makes sense to spend alot of money to eliminate the big cost - but not to eliminate the little cost.