When Chips Drive Chips

Or, the Waymo for Truckers

The latest union-busting plan is underway! PepsiCo, which owns Frito-Lay, is trying to reduce the number of unionized truck drivers it employs! Are they hiring undocumented aliens from faraway places like, well, other places on earth? NO! They’re doing the full Waymo, with robot trucks! If you visit Phoenix this summer, which is great for weight loss if you stay outside during all daylight hours, you’ll see these union-busting trucks transporting PepsiCo products between bottling plants, storage facilities, and stores, such as Walmart and Dollar Admiral General. PepsiCo has over 35 of these vehicles on the road today.

It has been reported in the Wall Street Journal.

If you’re familiar with Waymo, this is the same idea, except better, because there are no backseat drivers. The products never leave a negative review! 😡Doritos stay pretty quiet on the trip, although I worry about the Pepsis, as they seem bottled up, ready to explode! 😬Anyways, the trucks use radar, and lidar, but not gaydar, as they are designed not to discriminate. Interestingly, although they were originally built as driverless, they continue to have a steering wheel, iPad screens, seatbelts, and air conditioning. The last makes sense because they won’t want the computer chips to overheat out in the Phoenix sun in the summer. Overheat the Doritos chips … nah, they’re good there.

These are not full-sized semis, but instead are mid- or full-sized box trucks made by Isuzu. The tech is supplied by a company named Gatik: it’s better than what Tesla or Waymo has. One key difference is that the trucks are programmed for specific routes, instead of running wherever a Gen-Z smartphone requests them. The trucks run the same routes daily, building up muscle memory for the drive.

How do Teamsters feel about autonomous trucks? Well, how would you feel if someone created technology to eliminate your job? 😡 They have requested that PepsiCo put union drivers on the trucks to ensure their safety (the safety of the truck, not necessarily the union driver). That, ummm, reduces many of the benefits of the trucks. For you see, gentle reader, the trucks can run 365 days a year, in nearly all weather (they don’t do well in Palisades fires or Paris futbol championship victory riots). They don’t call in sick, they don’t walk out on strike, and they don’t demand many benefits: just regular maintenance and upkeep. Plus - let us not kid ourselves - being a truck driver is not a fun job. It’s tiring; it’s also boring. So much so that there’s a shortage of truckers, which is why illegal immigrants flock to these jobs … although recent SCOTUS decisions may reduce that.

Something you may not know that I knew (because I worked at a supermarket in high school) is that many delivery drivers are also salespeople: they deliver product, and they try to get stores to stock more, run specials, etc. PepsiCo plans to hire dedicated sales people to take over that role.

Are there downsides? Yes. Because they cause far fewer accidents, the trucks lower demand for lawyers who sue on behalf of traffic victims. 😡 Plus they are programmed to obey the speed limit and not roll through intersections, which means they are a menace to people in a hurry! 😡 But before you panic, remember: in Arizona “ADOT’s top priority is safety”! 😀