Fortescue robot trucks (WA)

170628W Melbourne Herald Sun - Fortescue robot trucks.

Roderick

They will be on the Monash next - already on trial in Europe.

Yeah seen the articles in the main stream press, and it's happening in America on grain farms with the chase bin tractors one man driving the harvester or I should say minding the harvester

No one seems to have given much thought to what people do with their time as more and more of jobs like this evaporate, to me we already have way too much strife in the world from people with time on their hands, don't think the future looks bright a all

This is not truck related but on the same line
One of my last jobs at the Copper Refineries Townsville was an upgrade to the plant
In the tank house there was 6 overhead cranes working 7 days 3 shifts they were replaced with 2 overhead cranes fully computer controlled NO DRIVER and could pick up 2 different loads from the tank cells, and they did more work than the 6 cranes with drivers
Ian

busman wrote: No one seems to have given much thought to what people do with their time as more and more of jobs like this evaporate, to me we already have way too much strife in the world from people with time on their hands, don't think the future looks bright a all

So often we never see the real cost up front of what some things are

12 months or so ago I was listening to the radio and they were talking drug use and its relationship to people having no self worth

And one of the key drivers in drug use is loss of lower skilled and blue collar jobs, so much so that one European country legalized every drug and spent all the money they normally spent fighting drug problems on job creation
Within a very small amount of time new jobs been created the drug problem had all but vanished
Now Im not saying any of this is the answer but it was very interesting

Our world has changed so much since the early 1980's with almost no manufacturing left that those very people that built this country no longer have a place

After listening to the radio interview that day and thinking about it and Australia's path that we have taken I guess Im surprised the drug problem isnt a lot worse

Paul

I started work in the Insurance Industry in 1971 and there were 40,000 members of the Union.

Today the industry would be lucky to have 1/10th of that number working in it.

Where are the other 36,000 people?

They all had to leave the industry and find alternative jobs, but they are in short supply because mechanisation and business closure says they aren't needed.

Interesting observations, Guys.
Was it Orwell (maybe Huxley) who coined the phrase that people would become "surplus to requirements"??
Maybe for a lot of us, we at least had the chance of meaningful employment, hate to even contemplate what it's going to be like for our grandkids.
Dave

Paul, I don't agree, I do think the drug problem is already really bad, it seems ice is one of the main culprits these days, dunno what they see in something that sends them physco.
Long way from smoking a few pot leaves and mellowing out, even the THC molecule has been changed now.

I guess it is a part of the capitalist dream, when all is driven by profit, you have no choice as an buissnesman or employer but to keep up, which usually means downsizing the workforce in order to keep up with the competitor who then buys more machinery, so you do the same, getting rid of those skills accumulated over the years.

Seems to me it is an ever diminishing circle, perhaps there will be a lightbulb moment before the revolution, "we was conned" but not holding my breath. No politician is going to get up and say "face facts, there will be bugger all jobs in the future", are they ? No they just bullshit about the "new economy" and training for "the jobs of tomorrow" without even knowing
1. If there will be a tomorrow
2. If there will be any worthwhile employment
3. What those jobs, if they exist, will be.

Head down, step off soapbox, back to cave with knuckles dragging. Sorry.

I don't think we have to worry too much. Computers and vehicle electronics are never 100% reliable and I cant see one tarping a load or wheeling boxes into a customer's premises.
TNT just installed an automatic system to handle freight and then had to hire extra staff to deal with the ones the machines could not cope with.
see www.tnt.com/express/en_au/site/home/how-...c_shipment_fees.html