[s1mon]

I’m surprised with how much care went into breaking down the various pieces of the industry, there was zero mention of the Teamsters Union. Nor is there much mention of any of the human issues which lead to things like most trucking companies failing in the first couple of years.

Perhaps looking at trucking from a human centered design perspective would identify problems and needs which are missing from this otherwise deep analysis. What are the pain points of the various types of roles/people involved, what makeshift solutions are they currently using, and do they have money to spend on a better solution?

[snowypine]

Author here - there's definitely a lot about trucking that I didn't get to cover. E.g. growth in autonomous vehicles, the issues recruiting drivers, federal regulation, and the lasting impacts of unions.

That being said, human centered design probably doesn't work in trucking. The assumption here is that people within a certain role has a fixed set of pain points. The truth is that trucking is too wide to categorize in that way. E.g. I met dispatchers that had a really hard time finding loads, but others had a really hard time getting drivers to pay them. Every person's experience and pain points in trucking are all slightly different simply due to the nature of the industry.

I think there's certainly an education component to most trucking companies failing but the root of the problem is the design of the industry.

[Scubabear68]

This is an excellent observation. I am working a bit in the marine/rail terminal space (on the software side), it is amazing how much functionality is built specifically to fulfill union contract terms at various terminals.