Tr
a
ns
p
ort
at
i
o
n
IN
T
E
RM
ODA
L
OVER 825 GLOVES IN STOCK
ORDER BY 6 PM FOR SAME DAY SHIPPING
COMPLETE CATALOG 1-800-295-5510
π
SHIPPING SUPPLY SPECIALISTS
π
SHI PING PPLY SP I LIST
mitigate their impact on the industry. Railroads could cut
their labor costs by reducing train crew sizes from two to
one or by leveraging investments made in Positive Train
Control (PTC) technology—which tells a train where it
can safely travel and reinforces that directive by overriding crew decision-making—as a step toward building a
fully autonomous train. (PTC technology will be required
on all trains by the end of 2018.) Both approaches,
though, would move forward over the dead bodies of
railroad labor unions.
Foster Finlay, head of the transport practice at consultancy Alix Partners, said rails’ intermodal services have
improved to the point where they can challenge over-the-road trucks at any level, regardless of how autonomous
truck technology evolves. Rails know there isn’t much
margin for error in intermodal because, unlike carload
service, there is no rail monopoly. As a result, they have
shed the age-old mindset of “toothpaste tube” service—
squeeze it at one end and eventually it will come out the
other—to become more service-sensitive and custom-er-focused, Finlay said. A just-in-time delivery service, or
one that’s as close to that as is practical for an intermodal
network to provide, is “well within reach,” Finlay said.
Autonomous trucks will force change to both highway
and rail modes, said Craig Dickman, chief executive offi-
cer of Breakthrough Fuel, a Green Bay, Wis.-based com-
pany that provides fuel management services. For trucks,
the potential changes are as obvious as they are profound.
For rails, it would mean an end to selling intermodal ser-
vices based primarily on lower costs. As the scales begin
to balance, rails will need to focus on strengthening their
customer relationships, becoming more data-driven, and
operating more efficiently than they ever have before,
Dickman said. Reliability and predictability, which have
not always been intermodal’s strong suits, will become
priorities, he said.
“It won’t be a situation where one segment wins and
one loses” in a world transitioning to autonomous trucks,
he said. “Both segments will change.”
TRIALS UNDER WAY
Shippers pay the bills, and some are bullish about autonomous trucks. Ties Soeters, North American vice president
of logistics procurement for the Belgian brewery titan
Anheuser-Busch InBev, told an industry conference in
June that self-driving technologies are poised to deliver
across-the-board benefits, most critically when it comes to
mitigating the chances of human error, which causes up to
90 percent of all big-rig accidents.
Soeters, whose company was involved in the world’s
first commercial driverless truck trial last October, may be
more aggressive than most logistics executives in embracing the new technology. The question for everyone, especially the railroads, is how many other big shippers feel
that way and whether they are just waiting to see how
regulators lay out the rules of the road. Soeters said the
value of autonomous truck operations would not be fully
realized until that happens.
THE DISTANT FUTURE
The use of an autonomous vehicle with no driver—known
in federal safety lingo as a “Level 5” operation—is years
away, if it ever happens at all. A more feasible near-term
scenario is the adoption of a “Level 3” threshold, where
a driver turns over control of a vehicle but remains ready
to take over its operation should problems with the
system arise. Or it could be something less technologically daring such as a driver-assisted platoon system
where trucks travel in close formation and communicate
electronically to coordinate vehicle speed and braking,
technology that platoon supporters say will reduce drag
and save fuel.
As it is tentatively envisioned today, platoons would
assemble near a highway on-ramp for the tandem move
and then disengage at pre-arranged exits for the vehicles
to deliver locally. Marc Althen, president of Reading,
Pa.-based third-party logistics service provider Penske
Logistics, reckons platooning could become a reality
within two to three years. Lee Clair, a consultant who has
worked extensively with the railroads, said platoon oper-
