Source|Smart Car Reference (ID: AI4Auto)
Author|Yifan
100 years old, sitting on 12,000 trucks, ready to file for bankruptcy!
Just recently, the American truck giant Yellow announced that it would stop operations, and about 30,000 employees of the company lost their jobs instantly.
Yellow's collapse was not without warning. In 2020, it received US$700 million in epidemic relief, and in 2021, the company implemented a cost-cutting plan, but it still failed to survive the industry change and business contraction.
Photo|Its trucks lined up for auction Source: TikTok@doneright40
However, on the one hand, the traditional truck model is unsustainable, and on the other hand, self-driving trucks - the United States is still hindering the landing because of various baggage, and even the pioneer of self-driving Google Waymo has stopped the truck business.
The meeting point of history, ironic and hilarious.
Truck giant Yellow collapsed
The just-fallen trucking company Yellow, founded in 1924, is America's premier trucking giant:
It has 12,000 trucks and employs about 30,000 people, including about 22,000 truck drivers. The customers served include well-known multinational brands such as Walmart, Amazon, and Starbucks.
As a result, not long ago, even workers' benefits and pensions could not be paid, and now it has been officially announced that it is out of business, and it is ready to sell its business.
Yellow's fall means that the trucking industry, which accounts for about 72% of the freight demand in the United States, has ushered in the largest collapse in history.
The trucking business is so important in the United States, and Yellow is a trucking giant, after a century of vicissitudes, how did it fall at this moment?
Photo|Yellow's 100-year changes
It can be analyzed from two aspects: internal and external factors:
First of all, the internal factor is also the root cause - the long-term decline in the company's revenue.
In 2020, affected by the epidemic and supply chain disruption, the company's annual revenue fell by 14%, and in 2021, the company actively helped itself and cut costs, but the result was to add fuel to the fire, and the net profit plummeted by 103.93%.
Although $720 million in federal pandemic relief was previously received, it did not help at all. Today, the company's debt has reached US$1.6 billion (equivalent to more than 10 billion yuan).
Especially this year, the freight market has shrunk as a whole, and external factors have become the "last straw" that crushed Yellow, and eventually went bankrupt.
The unfortunate Yellow, the American truck field, has been making headlines lately:
The development of unmanned trucks is in trouble, and traditional trucks are laid off and bankrupt.
Ironically, in order to protect the latter, local legislation even prevented the application of autonomous driving to trucks.
Unmanned trucks are blocked in the United States
This is another counterattack of the "coachmen" to the development of science and technology under the fear of unemployment.
Unmanned truck technology, as the name implies, is to allow trucking without people and reduce driver-related labor costs, which account for about 14% of the company's total costs.
Take the downed Yellow, for example, where truck drivers account for about 73 percent of the workforce. If all trucks are replaced with driverless vehicles, it can save more than 1.4 billion yuan per year.
The company saves labor costs, but the truck driver's job is gone. Faced with the risk of job losses, truck drivers quickly fought back.
Behind them stood a powerful organization, the Truckers' Union, which once numbered more than 2 million members.
Photo|"The Irishman" Truck Drivers' Union President (played by Al Pacino)
The union acted decisively and lobbied the California legislature to introduce regulations in early June:
By 2030, unmanned trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds (about 4.5 tons) must be present when driving.
4.5 tons is the specification of small trucks, which means that the vast majority of trucks are mandatory to have people, so what to talk about reducing labor costs, unmanned truck technology has lost value in North America.
Tucson Future official website
Isn't it limited to 2030? Wait.
First, restrictions are likely to remain beyond 2030. Secondly, even if it is released, the development of technology will be rapid and rapid by then, and by then I am afraid that it will already be far ahead of friendly businessmen.
Technology loses value in the short term, and the situation is not optimistic in the long run.
Therefore, the regulations amount to a death sentence for unmanned trucks in North America:
On June 29, Tucson Future announced that it would consider selling its unmanned truck business in the United States and set its sights on Asia.
On July 27, Google's self-driving company Waymo announced the closure of related businesses...
What's even more ironic is that unmanned trucks have withdrawn from North America and still failed to save traditional trucks:
Now the freight business is shrinking, and the century-old giant Yellow has not been able to hold on. The company's 22,000 drivers still lost their jobs.
In the future, unmanned driving must dominate the road, and artificially hindering the landing of technology, after all, it is a mantis as a car.
There is nothing new under the sun, which is reminiscent of the Red Flag Act:
In the sixties of the nineteenth century, coachmen took to the streets to protest that cars had taken their jobs.
It eventually forced Britain to introduce a law that required someone to walk in front of a car holding a red flag or kerosene lamp while moving.
Figure | @Gaulker
As a result, cars travel the same speed as people walk, which seriously hinders the development of British automobiles.
But the car still became popular around the world, and the coachmen ended up unemployed.
More than a hundred years ago, coachmen protested and marched to save their jobs and stop the development of local automobiles.
More than a hundred years later, truck drivers are unwilling to lose their jobs, and unions lobby to limit driverless driving.
Unfortunately, history is a wheel of reincarnation, and no one can stop it from rolling forward.