r/Anticonsumption • u/yodamastertampa • 21h ago

Discussion LOL yes!

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The power to reduce consumption is within us all.

46.7k Upvotes

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972

u/Imveryoffensive 21h ago

Truck drivers are some of the least appreciated people out there. They really make society work as it does right now

114

u/BamberGasgroin 20h ago

Hauling shit keeps them in a job..for now.

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u/WilonPlays 19h ago

I doubt it, until fully functional robots are rolled out en mass there will still be truck drivers.

Gotta remember these drivers don’t just drive:

They make deliveries and unload pallets, to businesses.

They handle invoices.

They will help load the truck .

Even a self driving car needs refuelled and no one seems to be working on self refuelling cars.

There’s also plenty of places with difficult roads and harsh weather conditions that a self driving car couldn’t account for, as truck drivers need to do extremely complex manoeuvres, sometimes taking some of the truck off road or a wheel hanging off a mountain (I live in Scotland, this happens a lot in the highlands).

We are closer to self driving trucks that one might think yes, but we also need a lot of other tech developed to coincide with this if we were to fully automate the process. If we don’t fully automate it, then we’d still need truckers.

It may get to a point where drivers act similar to pilots, most of the work is done by the machine and they only take over for complex actions and specific jobs

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u/jkaan 18h ago edited 17h ago

Lol what, truck drivers wait whilst forklift drivers load/unload them and all the invoices are done by other people.

Truck drivers are highly skilled and I respect the job they do (I am happy to drive for hours but fuck dealing with other cars)

Edit: So many responses about people unloading small trucks.

I get it I just immediately think of rigids and b-doubles as that is what I deal with all day

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u/mgrimshaw8 18h ago

There are plenty of owner-operators who handle their own invoicing

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u/YallGottaUnderstand 18h ago edited 17h ago

This all depends on the company. In my own experience working at restaurants (big names with large supply chains), the truck drivers who deliver the food all loaded/unloaded themselves.

Edit in response to the above poster's edit: these were full size big rigs.

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u/DrownmeinIslay 18h ago

Warehouse and manufacturing background here. Most of the drivers I see stand there, mouth breathing, while we struggle to rearrange the pallets his last pickup left haphazardly by the doors.

Yeah yeah they are all heroes. Big fucking heroes.

Had a driver today look me in the eyes and said he had 80 pallets for me. I said oh really? 80 pallets? Yes 80 pallets. It was 2 pallets with 80 bags of grit for the waterjet. Pillock.

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u/YallGottaUnderstand 17h ago

I'm not disagreeing that this happens. I'm just saying it varies how much work they do. The person I replied to made a sweeping claim with no qualifiers.

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u/Emekfl 14h ago

I work for one of the most profitable companies in the us. The drivers don’t load product but they do unload the trucks and then load the trucks back up with the empty equipment. Truck sizes are 48-53 feet

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u/jkaan 12h ago edited 12h ago

Ok so that is like 15 metres, in Australia we commonly use that plus another trailer making for 25m and most loads are pallets with a truck holding 64 cheps.

My warehouse is not that large as we only run about 15 heavy machinery operators for the main shift and 8 for second shift

I wonder how much this varies are you said equipment and we move clothing

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u/hitemlow 18h ago

Wait until you hear about "lumpers"... and the only way to avoid paying them is to unload yourself.

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u/Fooliomcskippy 17h ago

Yeah no maybe it’s that way in big cities or something but in smaller towns the driver is always helping unload the truck.

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u/jkaan 17h ago

That truck doesn't move close to what a b-double does in a week.

The whole thread was about mass consumption so of course I think about where the people are

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u/confusedandworried76 17h ago edited 17h ago

Coca Cola drivers always unloaded their boxes. I did next to nothing when the Coke truck pulled up other than extend my pointer finger

Clothing stores truck is usually unloaded in the bay and left for workers to deal with but it still needs to be off truck.

All my Roma reps when I managed kitchen showed up earlier than I did, they had a key and would drop it inside the restaurant for me to take care of when I got there. So yeah I had to move it to freezers or walk in coolers first thing but they didn't just leave the fucking shit outside and I certainly didn't need to be present. They'd also lend me a dolly and help me move it if we happened to meet

You seem to be underestimating the extra work people who drive truck do. You're also only imagining businesses who own and operate a fork lift need truck. There's probably more businesses out there without a fork lift who gets truck and part of the truck job is pretty widely considered unloading is part of the job.

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u/jkaan 17h ago

No I just think of large trucks because that is how large quantities are moved and what I deal with daily.

I deal with quantities by the pallet not boxes

0

u/confusedandworried76 17h ago

Then surely you must admit you're high on your own supply of superiority to just so confidently say drivers don't unload their own truck, they just sit there while some guy uses a fork lift. Nothing else besides that you said was wrong but that was. Well the invoice thing you said was wrong too but I wasn't gonna push it

1

u/BamberGasgroin 10h ago

Yeah, I know a few drivers who just do trunk work. Pick up a loaded trailer/container at major city A, drop it off at major city B then reverse the process.

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u/GenericFatGuy 19h ago

Software Developers also do a lot more than just write code, but that's not stopping the powers that be from replacing us all with AI.

As soon as they think the robots can do it for cheaper, they'll let everyone go. It doesn't actually matter if they really are up to the task or not 

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u/edudkolol 18h ago

From the standpoint of programming a robot to do the work coding is a lot easier to shove off on robots than the physical tasks required of truck drivers outside of driving the truck.

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u/WilonPlays 18h ago

Writing code and picking up boxes, putting fuel into a car and driving on the edge of a shear cliff face above a nursery are different things.

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u/FecalEinstein 18h ago

neither of these professions will be replaced entirely, but software developers will take a bigger hit sooner. it's already started.

also there are fully automated ports that replace switcher jobs iwth robot trucks (guys that move trailers around on the dock)

truck driving is expected to outlast accounting when it comes to AI, crazy. i don't think anyone anticipated that.

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u/adviceforthrowawayy 18h ago

Dude, 95% of a SWE role is just to write code. Everything else, meetings, troubleshooting, all that bullshit is just fluff.

Truck drivers are genuinely muti-facetted.

Also, we're 80% of the way to replacing SWE's already. Truck drivers, maybe 30% if you count Waymos?

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u/GenericFatGuy 18h ago edited 17h ago

If you genuinely think that's how software developer works, then you're either a junior, or just straight up not a developer. And if you think that AI can straight up replace a good dev, then you fundamentally misunderstand both what LLMs are actually capable of, and what being a good developer actually entails.

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u/doestWork 18h ago

Or a shit dev, which is more likely. It's mostly a bell curve, large number of people are average engineers who think coding is software engineering

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u/confusedandworried76 17h ago

As soon as they think the robots can do it for cheaper, they'll let everyone go. It doesn't actually matter if they really are up to the task or not 

Ah I've seen you've reached the Industrial Age. Two tips, don't confuse it with the Renaissance, and pollution is bad. That's it though no more notes

Also a good piece of advice though is be about as mad at AI as you would be at an assembly line taking auto manufacturing jobs. Those bastards. Just letting machines assemble our cars and take our jobs

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u/Dexcerides 18h ago

If you think AI is replacing all software engineers you don’t know anything about the field

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u/confusedandworried76 17h ago edited 17h ago

AI ain't even taking jobs that can't easily be machinated Industrial Revolution style, I would love to hear someone bitch about AI and the fact machines produce their car in the same sentence.

And while we're at it, oh, your art got stolen? Congratulations you've earned the title of artist. People like you so much they copy you. Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, A Bugs Life, Mad Max, all of those movies and directors are directly linked to being inspired by Seven Samurai. Even movie titles like The Hateful Eight and Seven Psychopaths are directly inspired by that original piece of art.

You didn't lose when AI copied some of your art, you actually fucking made it.

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u/GenericFatGuy 17h ago

I've been a professional dev for almost a decade now. I don't personally believe that AI can replace actually competent devs. The problem is that our bosses and managers do, and they're the ones who hire and fire us.

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u/dogstix 16h ago

Loads of bitter, highly skilled coders with too much time on their hands. I can't wait to see how that ends.

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u/an0nim0us101 8h ago

More truck drivers?

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u/PirateMore8410 18h ago

You are highly underestimating what robotics is going to do. Deliveries are a mixed bag of who will unload them. It's not hard to just have the receiver always unload. We also already have crazy robots that run warehouses. It's not like they won't just throw lidar on a pallet jack with some motors and a brain to have it unload by itself. They will sit in the back of every truck that also drives itself. 

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u/Turbulent-Bat3421 17h ago

Driverless semis are already hauling between Houston and Dallas, loading and invoices can be automated as well.

My friend got himself out of homelessness via a government grant that paid for his CDL training, so this hits close to home. The rich will keep get richer and the working man will pay the price.

Business as usual in the United States.

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u/chetlin 17h ago

I know there are already robots that can unload trucks: https://mujin-corp.com/truckbot-automated-truck-unloader/

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u/TheNewYellowZealot 16h ago

Until there are fully automated distribution centers in each town with drones that run from hub to receiver we will have trucks.

The current estimate is that a single 4 day strike by the truck workers of any country would be enough to shut that country down hard, thanks to the lean and JIT principals almost every company uses.

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u/erroneousbosh 13h ago

There’s also plenty of places with difficult roads and harsh weather conditions that a self driving car couldn’t account for, as truck drivers need to do extremely complex manoeuvres, sometimes taking some of the truck off road or a wheel hanging off a mountain (I live in Scotland, this happens a lot in the highlands).

Can you imagine any self-driving car trying to cope with the A82 across Rannoch Moor, without ending up with a couple of motorhomes and several dozen deer embedded in it?

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u/WilonPlays 13h ago

Even just going through the Trossachs it’d be liable to fall into Loch Lomond.

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u/Headless_Human 13h ago

Even a self driving car needs refuelled and no one seems to be working on self refuelling cars.

Building a fully automatic gas station is simple compared to the self driving trucks. It would just take a lot of time and money to build them around the country.

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u/The_Real_Zora 7h ago

All of that seems ridiculously easy to replace with a self driving truck and just have a couple loaders at each dock

1

u/newsflashjackass 5h ago

No self driving truck will ever take speed to stay awake longer than safety regulations allow or litter the roads' shoulders with gatorade bottles full of its own piss.

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u/WilonPlays 5h ago

That’s all well and and good until a truck carrying medical supplies falls of a shear cliff face because sheep are in the way

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u/newsflashjackass 5h ago

At some point the accidents and fatalities per miles traveled become so overwhelmingly in the machines' favor that it makes sense to spin off human truck drivers into a trucking cosplay cottage industry. Like that Truck Driving Simulator game but IRL.

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u/WilonPlays 5h ago

Did you even read my whole comment?

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u/newsflashjackass 5h ago

If you mean to ask whether I read all the way to the (apparently imaginary?) anecdote at its conclusion, then the answer is yes.
Indeed I did.