Today’s truck drivers, operating under the hours of service (HOS) rules, might optimistically get 3,000 miles per week in long-haul operations. More often, it’s 2,000 miles, and the number is much less in urban and regional operations.
What could freight capacity be if there were a mandatory 168-hour work week? Trucks averaging just 50 mph (accounting for stops and traffic) might achieve 8,400 miles per week.
Put another way, with a 168-hour work week, a package put on a truck in Los Angeles could be in New York — a road distance of perhaps 2,800 miles — in 56 hours or less.
How much would consumers and shippers pay to have deliveries by road anywhere in the U.S. in two days? How much would they pay to have that capability all year long, even when they weren’t using it?
A 168-hour work week is literally working 24/7, which is not something humans can do but perhaps is within reach of autonomous vehicles.
Some historical perspective on the 168-hour work week is useful.
According to a December 15, 1941, Automotive News article, in December of 1941, the U.S. automotive industry, at the direction of the U.S. government, mandated the 168-hour work week for five vital industries needed to support the critical needs of the defense industry. This was just a week after the U.S. declaration of war. That mandate didn’t mean individuals had to work non-stop; it meant certain industries were operating 24/7, with the supply chains having to rise to the challenge.
Back then, customer demand was not an issue. The demand was the free world's militaries, and they had insatiable appetites and bottomless checkbooks.
Factories have materials coming in and products going out. They require shipping in both directions. A 168-hour work week for any one factory likely requires a 24/7 supply chain in and out.
Here’s some food for thought for those eying the dangling autonomous vehicle carrot on a stick: AVs may enable near 24/7 shipping, but what does that mean for the rest of the supply chain? What does that mean for warehouses, factories, railyards, ports, consumers, and everything else?
Is a 24/7 shipping world supportable in today’s real-world economy?
FedEx is pretty close to running a 168-hour work week. They started this in the 1970s, combining aircraft, hubs, depots, and trucks to enable next-day delivery in many markets. It’s a truly remarkable system. But deliveries and pickups are still largely restricted to more traditional business hours at companies, as most commercial operations in the U.S. are based on people’s schedules.
There are exceptions where groceries, restaurants, hospitals, gas stations, etc., might operate 24/7, but the majority of shippers and consumers work days and have weekends off. While FedEx might appear to have the lights on 24/7, they really are not operating continuously everywhere, not like a conveyor belt that runs 24/7.
Countless comedic performances have demonstrated the challenges of that continuous conveyor belt over the decades, going back to Charlie Chaplin and progressing through the likes of Lucille Ball, Michael Keaton, Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, and others.
The trucking industry has tried to live up to the “just-in-time” shipping goal that minimizes inventory, but often there is inventory hidden in reserve somewhere in the system to deal with inevitable hiccups.
"Always on/always running" has to be viewed in the context of the complete supply chain. For autonomous trucks to run 24/7, the world needs to run 24/7. Stores, warehouses, factories, railyards, ports, etc., all need to be operating 24/7.
It turns out, many facilities don’t. Many are closed at night because of a combination of labor realities, local noise and traffic ordinances, and market realities. Many are closed on weekends.
Three shifts at a factory often mean the market is peaking — a high demand for products such that factory management and investors require maximum output. As demands ease, the economy of staffing and operating at peak capacity significantly eats into profitability, so plants go to two- or one-shift operations.
Supply and demand market conditions fluctuate significantly, making 24/7 operations very rare.
It happened during World War II out of necessity. Economics were secondary to the country’s survival.
When was the last time you heard of companies operating 24/7? I’ve seen a few high-demand markets in my time where truck factories were operating two shifts, with some parts of the factory needing to run three shifts to feed the two-shift production line. But it has been rare.
Hiring, staffing, training, and other overhead activities necessary to run additional shifts inherently entail lead times and costs. Staffing up and staffing down because of market dynamics can take months.
And where do the workers come from?
In a peak-demand marketplace, workers can be hard to get. In World War II, new pools of workers were opened, including women and minorities. Today, there are fewer reserves of labor to tap into. Robotics and automation are really some of the few possible resource pools.
Market volatility with human labor often means significant lead times are needed to respond to changes. Robotic factories and transportation are appealing to some because it seems easy to turn them on, off, speed them up, or slow them down. But those robots still need to be fed by a supply chain. Unless the entire supply chain is automated, the weakest link can often dictate daily capacity.
Artificial intelligence (AI) may also seem helpful in a 24/7 world, helping predict and respond to market volatility. However, the world is exceedingly complex. Will AI be able to predict earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, wars, droughts, pandemics, pestilence, hurricanes, political upheaval, economic changes, shortages, innovations, etc., and all their effects on supply chains?
The 24/7 world may be enabled by autonomous vehicles and factory automation, but there are significant supply chain ramifications to working a 168-hour week. Those AVs, factory robots, and AI tools may not achieve their desired asset utilization goals in a largely unpredictable real world that still has humans in the supply chain and as consumers.
