Scotty Douglas isn't worried about self-driving trucks, but he reckons transport managers should be worried...
So I’ve been recently pondering some of the bigger corporate questions in life.
Given that it was not so long ago that I thought Gross Domestic Product was actually farting on the couch while watching The Bachelorette, I’m starting from a pretty low base.
However, here’s a human resources theory that management types rise to the level of their incompetence. The idea being that over the course of your career you keep getting promoted until you reach a position that is too much for you and that’s where you stay. No more promotions.
You reach a point where you can barely keep your shit together at work bumbling along and f**king up all over the place. The best bit is that if you have plenty of staff working underneath you, you can cover it up and blame them for the stuff ups.
Holy shit this was a revelation.
Given I’ve done some time driving for big transport companies over the years this explained a lot.
Trucking is a magnet for incompetent middle management types who’ve never driven a truck and, coincidentally, who are also blessed with the social skills of a PM shift forkie. The worst bit is that they actually believe they know what they’re doing, or try to give you that impression anyway.
The most important thing for these clock-suckers is making sure that somebody else is accountable for their f**k ups. That’s why they love compliance so much.
Compliance becomes a nicely padded out paper trail that ensures that in the case of an accident their incompetent arses are well protected.
Under this regime a driver is responsible for managing their own fatigue; well duh. Sure we have a responsibility to pull up when we’re tired and get a decent rest.
The trouble is that the way most large depots and DCs operate actively works against any sort of real world fatigue management.
Being dicked around by experts is so much of a constant in trucking that we hardly notice any more.
The only solace I can take from this is that these knuckleheads share the same uncertain future that everyone else in the transport industry is facing. Between automation, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, middle management is going to become an endangered species.
Computer algorithms are already being used to make investment decisions for large finance firms, hell there’s even one algorithm that’s been made a board member for Hong Kong based venture capital firm, Deep Knowledge Ventures. This robo-director is set to even be given board-voting rights in coming years. I shit you not.
Given my current financial state I could do with one of these programs myself. Or at least a program that administers an electric shock to the knackers every time I open a page on eBay, Amazon or Gumtree.
Which does however, make me wonder about this uncertain future we’re facing. Anyone remember a socially awkward kid at school? Maybe they got picked on for reading sci-fi instead of playing football?
No not the one who ate clag and glued his fingers together in woodwork, the smart one. The one who’s now seething with resentment at your love of sport, popularity and laughter.
Well that kid and a legion of others like them are steering us head long into a rapid social change. It’s Revenge of the Nerds writ large and boy are we all going to pay!
Sure this sounds like an internet conspiracy theory, however it’s not. While we’re at the coalface plugging away at the day-to-day grind of getting shit to where it’s got to go, other industries are rushing headlong towards some sort of utopian ideal.
This utopia supposedly means that we are all going to have the time to write that symphony that’s being brewing in your head after so many years on the road.
You’ll finally have time to learn the cello like you always planned to. That idea for a novel will come to fruition. Maybe you’ll paint.
There’ll be enough latte’s and smashed avo for everyone!
I doubt going pig shooting or drag racing is a part of this automated utopian ideal. That would just be distasteful. As would blowing shit up for fun.
What are we going to do for money? Well the most popular theories around at the moment suggest that western countries could adopt a base living wage for everybody. And if you can find a way to make some extra dosh on the side then good for you.
Funny, that kinda sounds like socialism. I seem to recall a couple of wars being fought last century over this
Given that the Yanks can’t even get any sort of gun reform or even a universal health care system in place I find it hard to believe that people are going to sit back and let this sort of dramatic social and political change trickle in. Same goes for a post-Brexit UK.
So my idea for the future is a targeted approach to automation. Just automate middle management. Get rid of the incompetent pen pushers, the office sociopaths who are seething with rage at the disappointment that their lives have become.
I’d rather work for an algorithm anyway. A computer has more personality than the average transport manager.
In the meantime I’ll just adopt the Charlton Heston approach to technological change, “You’ll have to pry my truck keys out of my cold dead hands.”
I ran that past SIRI before I wrote it, just in case you were wondering.