Artificial intelligence and the future of trucking
You can’t trust ChatGPT, but it could point to at least some good things for truckers.
ChatGPT, in case you haven’t heard, is the recently introduced artificial intelligence app that can answer questions, solve math problems, compose poems, and even write computer code. It’s scary and often simply wrong.
For example, I asked ChatGPT if there was a real shortage of truck drivers.
“Yes, there is an actual shortage of truck drivers in many parts of the world, particularly in the United States,” ChatGPT responded. “The American Trucking Associations has estimated that the industry is short of more than 60,000 drivers.”
Of course, there is hardly a shortage of drivers, but ChatGPT spouted big-trucking’s propaganda as authoritatively as the ATA itself.
That’s one example. Here’s another: I asked, “Who is John Bendel?”
ChatGPT said, among other things, that Bendel is a former truck driver who has written two books on trucking, speaks at industry conferences, and has been an editor for ATA’s Transport Topics. If it’s talking about me, only one of those things is true. I was a truck driver.
But it didn’t really matter what ChatGPT said. Two days later I asked again: “Who is John Bendel? This time it said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any specific information on a person named John Bendel.”
I went from somebody to nobody in 48 hours. It served me right for googling myself.
But what about those good things I mentioned?
ChatGPT marks the beginning of a new technology era
Even its creators don’t know what it is capable of. One of them was surprised to find out ChatGPT had learned a programming language it had not been specifically taught.
So, we don’t really know what ChatGPT – or AI in general – knows, never mind what it will learn going forward. But you can be sure its impact will dwarf even that of the iPhone in 2007 that placed the Internet in our hands. We can argue over whether it has been good or bad, but there is no doubt iPhones and the Android smartphones that followed had an enormous impact on trucking.
AI will undoubtedly affect trucking, particularly on the management side. You’re likely to find yourself talking to a robot that actually knows what it’s talking about, for one thing. We can only hope it won’t be lying. There will be other impacts as well. But the biggest change for the better may be the ability to route and re-route enormous numbers of trucks in real time.
Computers can already route trucks, of course. They route accounting for appointments, weather, fuel stops, and other requirements. They’ve been able to do that for a long time. What they have not been able to do effectively and reliably, though, is to improvise after dispatch, to reroute whole fleets as conditions change.
I think of all the cubicles I once saw in the acre-wide atrium at the headquarters of a top truckload carrier where 450 people at computer terminals managed a national fleet of more than 10,000 power units. Obviously, computers helped them do their jobs. But no matter how sophisticated that carrier’s software was, it took human dispatchers to sort through all the options at any given time. I’m sure it still does.
The enormous range of possibilities involved in dynamically controlling a large fleet simply overwhelms most computers. Some tech companies claimed to have solved the problem. They have all either gone out of business or moved on to other less-intractable challenges.
AI could help change that, maybe not by itself but as used in more powerful computers. And computer power is increasing as well.
So how would AI help truckload drivers?
Picture a computer program so smart that it cannot only tell drivers where to go and when, but also where they can meet and exchange trailers to enable a viable relay system.
Sure, it is being done, but only on a limited scale. It can be cumbersome and operationally awkward. With a truly smart system that works with thousands of trucks,it won’t have to be. An ideal system will track trailers and route them back to their owners of record. Or maybe carriers will lease from companies that supply generic, unbranded trailers to the industry for mileage fees. It won’t matter which carrier has any individual trailer.
If an AI system is smart and powerful enough, it won’t have to be limited to individual fleets. Multiple fleets could seamlessly swap trailers to keep freight moving while drivers could stay in limited geographical areas. Maybe that could get them home a lot more often.
Don’t worry, there would still be lots of long-haul work with carriers whose trailers cannot be swapped and relayed. That would include specialty trailers, like tankers that can only haul certain commodities and, say, heavy-haul equipment. In some cases, a carrier or shipper could want an individual driver to stay with a load from pickup to delivery for a variety of reasons.
It won’t happen tomorrow, of course. Lots of pieces need to fall into place. But for better or for worse, the technology is moving quickly, and we’re likely to see AI applied in other areas of trucking administration before it takes on the great routing challenge.
Meanwhile, you can try ChatGPT for yourself at https://Chat.openai.com/. LL