That's the difference. In an autonomous urban driving environment a monitor is expected to have full situational awareness at all times because driving in cities is a hugely complex process. A truck driving 1,100 miles on I-80 would not need to be monitored as closely, if at all, because that driving process is far simpler. This kind of highway driving accounts for the majority of over-the-road freight.
"Monitor" might be a misnomer, here, in that the monitor isn't expected to be actively watching what the truck is doing; rather the monitor would be expected to respond to infrequent issues and maybe handle off-highway driving to and from shipping and receiving facilities.
What drivers are paid for a given load reflects market conditions like e.g., weather, truck availability, and load availability, more than anything else.
Automating large parts of the driving process would make the job easier and more desirable. More people would be willing to work as monitors, which would increase truck availability and lower rates.
There’s also the possibility that a monitor could do other work while the truck drove. Team drivers already do this; the passive driver occupies herself when not driving by reading or even dispatching other loads.
If it were as simple as pushing a button a monkey could fit the bill. Or maybe a pigeon. [0]
The monitor would be in place to manage the last-mile driving and any other technically-challenging aberrations on the route. Human skill and judgement would still be required, just for much shorter periods.
The arrangement I described above assumes no need for active monitoring for long-distance driving. It is the most monotonous and least technically-complex part of the process and the driver would be free to do other things during it.
It’s not the same process as the autonomous urban driving being attempted by Waymo et al. Driving from Phoenix to Dallas on the highway is far simpler than driving around Phoenix.
Some drivers have to unload their trucks depending on the load and the receiver. For multiple LTL (less-than-truckload) loads the driver might stop at multiple facilities and unload a handful of pallets at each.
This would be more likely for smaller-format discount retail like, e.g., the Dollar Store or a restaurant supply chain.
It would be wholly dependent on the load and the technical implementation.
In my view the monitor would be a driver with standard knowledge and experience who could drive if the autonomous system encountered an edge case or for last-mile, i.e., from the freeway to the shipping or receiving facility.
Under those circumstances a load traveling ten hours with six hours of loading and unloading time would require two hours of active work and fourteen hours of standby.
Any driver would accept a lower rate for this kind of arrangement.
The driver shortage is a legitimate crisis and was the cause of huge rate increases last year. Driving a truck is a difficult job and fewer people are choosing it as a career path. [0]
“Regulatory constraints” refers to FMCSA’s hours-of-service rules, the legal limit to how many hours a driver may operate a truck in a given day. [1]
The in-vehicle monitor will likely be a standard part of autonomous and semi-autonomous trucking for the foreseeable future.
A monitor can be paid less than a driver, as they’re doing less work, and can respond to onsite issues more promptly and accurately than could a remote one.
"Monitor" might be a misnomer, here, in that the monitor isn't expected to be actively watching what the truck is doing; rather the monitor would be expected to respond to infrequent issues and maybe handle off-highway driving to and from shipping and receiving facilities.