The End of the Road for Advancements in Trucking?

David Pogue
·Tech Critic
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Dear David:

I work in the trucking industry. We attend economic conferences often. At a recent one, a topic came up that you might find interesting.

Noel Perry, a leading economist in our industry, made the statement, “We feel that inventory management and logistics has reached its peak.” That is, trucks are packed as full as they can be, robots manage complete warehouses, trucks are auto-loaded, intermodal rail is becoming more efficient and lower cost, parts are picked on demand. … “Just in time” is becoming an obsolete term. “Exactly right on time” is more like it. 

We cite Walmart, China’s demand, and U.S. consumption as the leading causes of this “climax”; the supply-chain process cannot be refined any further.

You’ve had 30 years of keeping your finger on the innovation pulse. What do you think? Is it possible that we have, in fact, reached the end of the line in advancing technology in this industry?

Brian K.

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Hi Brian…

My belief: It’s never safe to say, “We’ve reached the limit.”

History shows that every time we reach a limit, we find a new way around it. We couldn’t fit a movie onto a CD, so we invented the DVD. We couldn’t get any more mileage out of gasoline, so we developed hybrids. We can’t fit any more transistors onto a piece of silicon, so now we’re exploring graphene, vertical silicon and other radical technologies.

It’s my guess that the trucking industry isn’t done evolving yet. It may be that “shipping” will become the more appropriate term, as drones and self-driving vehicles may someday take some of the burden off of traditional trucking systems.

But, yeah. Betting that technology has reached the end of its evolution — in any field — isn’t a safe bet.

Hope this helps!

— DP

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