Would you recommend a family member or acquaintance to get into trucking

Yes

 

No

 

Trollific!

 

Yes, trucking is a great career and there's plenty of time left to be a driver and retire with a great pension.

 

Lots of other jobs will disappear long before driving jobs. At best, self-driving trucks can only operate in ideal weather conditions and on very select roads. A driver still has to be on the truck to fuel and take over when autonomous is not an option (60+ % of the time on todays roads), and to check in, and to back into docks, and drive in construction zones that will never go away.

You've been listening to too many wackos like Glenn Beck who love to inspire and feed fear and desperation just based on their inability to actually think things through after listening to this person or reading that book.

 

It will be years before drivers are replaced. No, I would not recommend this industry to a friend. But, a CDL is a good thing to have.

 

Yes. I was going to expound on that in my earlier post, too. There's reasons to not consider [OTR] trucking, but the idea that the job will be replaced by a computer at some point in your lifetime should not be one of them. A lot depends on the individual. Truck driving is not recommended for just anybody.

 

Waiting for the Otto trucks to hit low bridges

 

That's one thing they may actually excel at. The analysis of video and distance sonar and some basic math computations will cause it to stop abruptly for a low bridge, but also for a low twig from a branch.

But those trucks will probably operate on a programmed route which in theory should avoid low bridges, except when they are forced to deal with detours and/or construction issues. Again, these trucks will be met with dozens of issues that only a working brain can deal with and process correctly, not a computer program. This is why a human driver will always have to be in the seat or readily available to instantly take over full operation of the vehicle, at any time.

But let's be honest, with some of the "drivers" out here today, a truck owner may be better off to take their chances with questionably programmed computer chips and bug/grime-laden video lenses