Numlock News: August 18, 2026 • Barge, Robots, Train Robberies

Aug 18, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Train Robberies

The train robbery is alive and well, with thefts from trains quadrupling since pre-pandemic times as sophisticated teams of thieves pivoted toward theft rings when the drug trade dried up during lockdowns. All told, criminals stole $200 million worth of goods from 75,000 thefts on U.S. freight rail networks in 2025. Trains are targeted during the protracted stop times that enormous, miles-long trains must take; given the crew of two on such trains and the predictable nature of rail timetables, the automotives are essentially rolling warehouses.

Kiel Porter, Bloomberg

Solar

In the first half of 2026, 11,457.9 MW of solar power plants were deployed, accounting for 40 percent of new generating capacity among power plants added. Add in the 8,206.9 MW from batteries (28.6 percent of new capacity), 5,472.8 MW from onshore wind (19.1 percent) and 800 MW from offshore wind (2.8 percent), and the vast amount of power added has been in renewables.

Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News

Automation

While many possibilities have been made due to the automation in trucking (given the field accounts for most of the miles travelled and 60 percent of U.S. transportation fuel use), automation on commercial towboats on the Mississippi has a lot of promise. Millions of tons of commodities are moved on inland waterways in the United State, and it’s one of the most energy-efficient ways to move cargo. Machine learning navigation systems are being experimented with as well as hazard monitoring, vessel tracking and the calculation of stopping distances. If efficiencies can be found and planning can be improved, there’s lots of potential; one gallon of fuel can move a one-ton cargo 500 miles on a barge, but only 60 miles on a truck.

Gavin Maguire, Reuters

Robots

North American companies ordered just over 18,000 robots in the first half of 2026, which would put us roughly on pace to for last year’s 36,766 robots ordered over the course of the full year. Automation has been appealing for warehouse operators, given that demand for workers has sent the average hourly wage up 41 percent over the past 10 years. Robot manufacturers have also rolled out new options to finance robots, with lower upfront charges but a subscription price. There are lots and lots of still-open jobs in the space; there were 392,000 jobs open across transportation, warehousing and utilities in June, up 87,000 open roles year over year.

Liz Young, The Wall Street Journal

Plastic

PepsiCo reported using two million tons of plastic in packaging in 2025, down slightly year over year, with the company claiming that less of the plastic came from virgin materials. Overall, fiber accounted for 34 percent of PepsiCo’s packaging, PET plastic accounted for 30 percent, glass for 10 percent aluminum for 8 percent and flexible films at five percent.

Cole Rosengren, Food Dive

Technically This Happened To Icarus, Just On A Shorter Timespan

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that flight attendants and pilots have the highest and second-highest proportion of radiation-related cancer deaths, underscoring an under-discussed danger in aviation professions. The Federal Aviation Administration does formally recognize pilots and flight attendants as occupationally exposed to ionizing radiation, but unlike the air crew in other countries, American aviation workers are not subject to a federal dose limit or monitoring requirements. Air crew accrue three to six millisieverts per year of cosmic radiation, with the variation attributable to which flight paths they tend to fly. That’s significantly higher than the 0.4 millisieverts that the average air traveler who takes 10 cross-country round trip flights will accrue annually.

Katie Brace, Harvard Medical School

Delays

Wait time for cancer surgery is getting longer in the United States, according to a new study in JAMA Surgery. The study analyzed data from 2.7 million patients diagnosed with non-metastatic stage I–III cancers that needed surgery between 2012 and 2023. Breast cancer surgery wait times increased from 34 days at the beginning of the period to 45 days by the end, an increase also seen in colon cancer (from 20 to 31 days), lung (from 41 to 53 days), pancreatic (from 23 to 32 days), gastric (from 35 to 49 days) and esophageal (from 38 to 48 days).

Beth Mole, Ars Technica

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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