Self driving trucks and our future

The difference between trucking and trains is pretty large.

Trains cant just make a sudden left turn, and 1 - 2 people per truck would not exaclty be a reduction in labor.

Also we cant even get GPS to work right, the first time an 80,000lb truck ends up in a pre school instead of a walmart the DOT is going to flip the F out and ban all automated trucks from the road.

What we will likely get is better auto pilot for interstate driving, but even then you will need a human at the wheel, i really dont see the government letting trucks cruise down the highway with no one in them, ever.

 

It's amazing how many guys are for this.... You do realize as bad as pay is now for a lot of drivers, you know it's going to go down even more right? And some of you guys are really pushing for this...

 

lol..driver less vehicles....yes the roads will all be set up to allow this....heck they cant even make good roads now....I think freight has a better chance of being beamed from place to place via star trek b4 driver less freight ever happends

 

And you will. Sooner than you think.

Same answer for both, differently than its done now.

Better than most drivers will.

Just like the others above, differently than its done now.

All of these have the same answer. The driverless truck won't do any of that. A person will. But that person won't be a truck driver.

So could I. You can pretend that driverless trucks won't happen all you like. It won't change the fact that they are most definitely coming.

Its absolutely true that lots of aspects of the industry will have to change and adapt before driverless becomes a reality. But its also absolutely true that a truck which never needs to take a 10 hour break or a 34 hour reset will make more money for a company than a truck that does. And the economics of that will force all the other required changes to happen.

Shippers will only listen to companies quote a higher rate for a truck with a driver vs a driverless truck for so long before they spend the money to put in the required technology to allow them to ship their goods driverless at lower rates. If you went back to 1864 you could easily find a job as a farrier (a guy that shoes horses) if you knew the trade. You'd probably also be hard pressed to find a farrier at that time who believed their profession would be all but non-existent within 75 years. But that's exactly what happened once the automobile came around.

I would recommend anyone looking to get into trucking today instead consider going to diesel tech school and then going right into a good computer school afterward. Diesel techs who have a strong background in computer hardware and electronics are going to in demand moving forward. Truck drivers are going to go the way of farriers eventually. its only a question of when. But knowing how fast technology moves my guess would be sooner rather than later. It might be 30 years. It might be 40. But I wouldn't be shocked if we see the first ones within 20 years.

 

I agree with most of what you stated. Technology moves VERY fast and there are countless numbers of professions that throughout history have become obsolete. No matter how hard you resist you cant win the fight against progress. The time frame is uncertain and as I stated before a human will still be required to interface with the machine so the profession will probably still exist it will just gradually change in a profound way. I dont like it either but denial doesnt change reality.

 

My brother sent me a link to this rather informative video:

Humans Need Not Apply

Note that robotic driving will replace humans, which are demonstrably bad at driving....

 

what we aren't thinking about, is that a driverless truck doesn't need to back into a hole, or navigate city streets in order to create Armageddon in the industry.

all they need to do is replace the easy stretches of OTR miles. If they take 20% of the miles, how many drivers would be flooding the market for fuel, local LTL, heavy haul, etc? Even if only five hundred million miles are automated, that's 5000 OTR drivers looking for a job in other areas just to survive. Reverse trickle-down, lol.

About all you can do is not worry about it ,, milk what you can out of it and get financially prepared to make a move.

 

Hey.. I read about a Japanese corporation already Testing a "Driverless Truck" somewhere in Europe. Permits were submitted to USA DOT, to allow Testing in US soil. My take? we will see this Trucks on our roads in about 3 to 5 yrs if not earlier.