Outsource culture

PolarityMan

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

snowblind said:

Add in the greater wear and tear on road infrastructure due to the cars being heavier 

That's not actually a thing.

Even a 3-tonne car has almost no impact compared to a lorry.

True, but 33 million of them - versus 400k lorries - has to have an impact, especially on roads which weren't designed for regular use by vehicles of that kind of weight.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads

The sums exist and say "no". Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight.

A 1.5-tonne car has 0.75 tonnes per axle (let's assume even weight distribution because anything else is just as dodgy an asssumption), to the 4th power that's about 0.32.
A 2-tonne car gets you 1.
A 3-tonne car goes to a hair over 5.

A 2-axle lorry is restricted to 17 tonnes, so it scores up to 5,220.
A 3-axle lorry is restricted to 25 tonnes, and scores 4,800ish.
A 40-tonne lorry with 5 axles gets 4,096.

Plus trucks tend to have higher duty cycles than cars (ie each truck spends a lot more time on the road than each car).

OK, so we're getting waaaay off-topic here, but...if that were the case, then roads which never have lorries or trucks on them would basically last forever (aside from normal environmental damage).

The streets in my town would somewhat disagree. You'd be hard pressed to find any stretch of more than 200m without at least one pothole on it...in fact, the roads with the least potholes and cracks are the main roads in and out, which do have lorries up and down regularly. A huge proportion of the damaged roads have been completely resurfaced at some point in the last 20 years.

That would suggest something else is going on here, and it ain't lorries. Quality of materials and workmanship? Very likely. However, that's also going to affect how susceptible it is to vehicles of lower weight.

Therein lies the rub - the tests you referenced are well-known to be problematic, precisely because not all roads are made the same, and Googling around it looks like it's pretty much accepted in the construction industry that the results don't extrapolate well past the very specific road construction used in the tests (which, near as I can tell, was based on a US highway). Yes, the wear is related to the fourth power rule, but it's not negligible for a car on every kind of road. Especially with the penny-pinching, built-down-to-the-lowest-cost approach taken in the UK for the last 15 years.

Around here at least all the recent road damage appears to have been done by water.

PolarityMan

I see several people beat me to it

Sporky

The original testing lasted two years, with both concrete and tarmac surfaces. They noted that damage was higher in winter. 

jakeolly

LionAquaLooper said:

snowblind said:

I've been trying to impress on the offspring to learn some kind of skill that is not AI-friendly. There's a lot of people who are going to find the job space they are in is being handed over to the machines. And once they come up with a robot that can flip burgers efficiently there's going to be an entire army of spotty teenagers kicking around the streets with nothing to do.

I'm go be a bin man when the time comes because it will never be replaced by machines.  All these innovations in the last 20-30 years, automate this, speed up that, micro size this, genetically modify that - and still no one can solve the world's waste disposal problem.  And it won't change anytime soon.  So yea - that line of work is definitely safe.

Fascinating ( rapidly growing)thread . I was a Council bod and have so many stories to confirm the general concensus. However I have a ‘ little bit of British pride’ moment related to bin men- Many years ago the bin lorry companies tried to bring single man operation machines into UK with the promise of massive ( staff reduction) savings However this required householders to bring bins to kerb edge in precise locations. …. When we said ‘Imagine trying to get a load of Brits to do that’ …. ‘ well it works in Europe’ was the response   Piloted, failed Hurrah for the disobedient Brits 

ToneControl

Some firms are de-outsourcing now. 

The rise of IT insourcing | PA Consulting

Jono111

LionAquaLooper said:

snowblind said:

I've been trying to impress on the offspring to learn some kind of skill that is not AI-friendly. There's a lot of people who are going to find the job space they are in is being handed over to the machines. And once they come up with a robot that can flip burgers efficiently there's going to be an entire army of spotty teenagers kicking around the streets with nothing to do.

I'm gonna be a bin man when the time comes because it will never be replaced by machines.  All these innovations in the last 20-30 years, automate this, speed up that, micro size this, genetically modify that - and still no one can solve the world's waste disposal problem.  And it won't change anytime soon.  So yea - that line of work is definitely safe.

You already get bin lorries that pick up, empty and return wheelie bins without needing an assistant, in a few years that can be paired with a self drive bin lorry and no more binmen

LionAquaLooper

Jono111 said:

LionAquaLooper said:

snowblind said:

I've been trying to impress on the offspring to learn some kind of skill that is not AI-friendly. There's a lot of people who are going to find the job space they are in is being handed over to the machines. And once they come up with a robot that can flip burgers efficiently there's going to be an entire army of spotty teenagers kicking around the streets with nothing to do.

I'm gonna be a bin man when the time comes because it will never be replaced by machines.  All these innovations in the last 20-30 years, automate this, speed up that, micro size this, genetically modify that - and still no one can solve the world's waste disposal problem.  And it won't change anytime soon.  So yea - that line of work is definitely safe.

You already get bin lorries that pick up, empty and return wheelie bins without needing an assistant, in a few years that can be paired with a self drive bin lorry and no more binmen

Oh bollox.