Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail, which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a little faster.
The reason you pay for long-haul trucking is that you want to have the driver _already on hand_ for the two short-haul trips at either end of the journey, navigating complex issues and handling cargo loading. The downside is that you have to pay the driver for the over-the-road portion. The upside is that there's zero chance of a driver not being available, and zero chance of the driver being left idle waiting for the long-haul transport to arrive.
The only novelty here is that Uber is the one paying the pools of short-haul truckers on either end, and assuming the risk that they will sit idle. (They are, of course, not going to tell us if it is unprofitable!)
The US already has one of the largest freight rail networks in the world (at the expense of having a totally shitty passenger rail network; although that's starting to change with Florida and California's efforts).
I wish more effort would be put into expanding freight even more so you could get the same speed and efficiency for shorter hauls, mail and package delivery. It seems like that would be way more worthwhile than automated trucks. It's substantially more trivial to automate freight trains as well. Passenger trains in Singapore, Malaysia and parts of London are already fully autonomous with no driver at all.
The U.S. used to have extensive short-haul rail, even inside cities. That's how cargo moved around back in the era before inexpensive motorized trucks.
I suspect the reason it disappeared is that rail sidings are large and expensive compared to truck loading docks. You're not going to have ten sidings on a property as easily as you stick ten bays in a loading dock.
> Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail, which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a little faster.
Speaking only from the US perspective, I agree with most of this. But there are a couple things you're not taking into account:
1) Delivery variability for rail. While rail is much cheaper in terms of cost per ton mile, good luck getting an accurate estimate of when it will be delivered. Midwest to Pacific Northwest I've seen variability of a week or two for going halfway across the country. If they're delivering to you and are multiple days late, they still expect you to drop whatever else you had planned and get their rail car unloaded on a relatively short turnaround or they start charging fees.
2) Rail requires quite a large scale. Many factories aren't shipping out more than a few semis per day. Getting to enough to fill a couple rail cars would significantly increase the inventory levels.
The reason you pay for long-haul trucking is that you want to have the driver _already on hand_ for the two short-haul trips at either end of the journey, navigating complex issues and handling cargo loading. The downside is that you have to pay the driver for the over-the-road portion. The upside is that there's zero chance of a driver not being available, and zero chance of the driver being left idle waiting for the long-haul transport to arrive.
The only novelty here is that Uber is the one paying the pools of short-haul truckers on either end, and assuming the risk that they will sit idle. (They are, of course, not going to tell us if it is unprofitable!)