I was recently reminded of the Henry Ford quote, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” After a little digging using several AI search engines, I discovered that this quote came out years after Henry’s death, and there is no verification that he actually said it. Regardless of its origin, this metaphor accurately captures human tendencies.
If you have been around industrial engineers in automotive or trucking companies, you likely have been exposed to the mindset that customers don’t really know what they want. I think it’s part of the training for styling experts and forward thinkers that they have to invent the future for us. In truth, that’s what they are hired to do. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes not.
That bravado, or arrogance, is inherently part of the DNA of innovators. The ordinary masses—the vast number of us—view the world as an evolution of what we know. It’s very challenging to be revolutionary. There are a lot of risks involved in innovating beyond the scope of most people’s vision.
Pure research and design (R&D) engineers and industrial designers, also known as styling engineers, are rare. Good ones are even harder to find. Often, they are protected from the ordinary world, secluded in key-carded studios or remotely located in design centers miles away from the rest of the company. Revolutionary thinking can be corrupted by exposure to real-world norms. To some extent, innovative thinkers need to be cloistered, not unlike 14th-century monks and nuns, or they risk losing the vision by being caught up in reality.
Many people can look at something like a semi-truck and think: Well, that could be better if it were lighter, more aerodynamic, had lower-resistance tires, was more reliable, put fewer pollutants into the atmosphere, cost less to run, carried more freight, had fewer accidents, etc. That is what OEM engineers do every day in companies like PACCAR, Daimler, Volvo, International, Mack, and more.
However, those engineers live in the world of evolutionary improvement. As such, nearly all their efforts wind up looking like something they previously designed. There are reasons why a conventional diesel tractor looks the way it does and has looked that way for more than 80 years.
Free thinkers, protected from the everyday world, can envision something completely different. They can ask questions like: Why do I need a cab on a truck? Why do I need a driver? Why do I need exhaust systems and emission systems? Why do I need diesel? Why do I need a truck?
Which brings me back to the quote attributed to Henry Ford. Faster horses, better wagons, better waste management in streets, a better hay and oats delivery supply chain, bigger wagons, iron hoops on wagon wheels to make them last longer, softer suspension systems using leaf springs, etc. Then along comes someone who proposes getting rid of the horse entirely, and all the infrastructure that goes with it. Wow. Revolutionary. And the idea took off.
My exposure to styling engineers has given me an appreciation for my own self-imposed biases and limitations. Free thinkers can be scary at times. Sometimes you almost have to laugh at the ideas they propose. But then you have to step back and think: What if they have something there? Why not let them run with it and see where it goes? You might wind up with something big, like replacing steam trains with diesel-electric ones, replacing wired telephones with personal smartphones, or replacing horses with cars and trucks.
We talk incessantly about the "Messy Middle," this period trucking is in where choices seem to multiply daily. Competing alternative fuels and powertrains have become viable. We are on the verge of removing drivers from trucks with autonomy. New sources of energy production in solar, wind, nuclear, and more are capturing market share. Fusion power might even be right around the corner.
I read an endless supply of media postings by various vested interests protecting their particular technology and assailing others. These are the people who want faster horses. They make up the majority of the industry, and they are wearing the same blinders their horses have on.
The future is not an evolution of what we are comfortable with. Tomorrow is something the majority of us are unable to conceive. We have to let it happen, not get in the way of trying out the new by overly protecting the familiar old.
In the 1880s, the first few installations of power stations and hydropower plants started to occur. Gas lighting started to be replaced with electric light bulbs. You are reading this on a computer or smartphone that was made possible by electrifying the U.S. I’m pretty sure the visionaries in 1880 had no concept of a computer or smartphone. The invention of controlled, powered flight by the Wright Brothers and others went from nothing more than glorified kites to Concordes in under 100 years, enabling quick international flights at low cost. The shipping container system that revolutionized port operations, trains, and shipping went from ships that could carry tens of containers to modern ones, like the Ever Macro, that can carry more than 15,000 TEUs—all in about 60 years. This includes intermodal trains that have more than 200 cars and massive drayage truck systems.
The free thinkers sometimes get it right in big ways we can’t foresee. You have to let them try, let them fail or succeed, but don’t immediately assume they are wrong. Ultimately, the market decides the fate of new ideas. And that takes time.
