[tschwimmer]

Well, I didn't say it was easy. :) It's a challenging software problem and the final 20% I imagine will be exceptionally difficult to automate. I have some other suspicions about why Flexport hasn't done this but I'm too far out to say anything with authority.

As for why the the industry folks haven't done this already, that's an easier one. For the operations people themselves, you're asking them to automate themselves out of a job. The efficiency and the cost savings aren't coming from nowhere, they're coming from salary spending on man hours. And I'm not just saying this is a cynical, self-preserving sabotage - I suspect many professionals in the space don't know or don't value automation. It's not "busywork" to them, it's _the job_ and that work is the core value that they add, so why would they change it up?

Leadership at these companies are probably more incentivized to do this, but to your own earlier point, they don't have the experience in building a modern application. They don't have the talent pool and they're probably afraid of "rocking the boat" too much because they have a good business already.

As I said before, I don't think any of the folks working in this space are stupid or incompetent. But there's a good quote from Upton Sinclair that I think is relevant here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."