Couple of questions

As far as #1, trucking is a wide open market. Anyone can haul anything anywhere, if they have the right equipment and a paying customer. Driver pay depends on a lot of factors - the freight rate, the # of support personnel & parasites above the driver sucking the $$ away, fuel costs, insurance costs, equipment costs, operational efficiency, etc.

#3- Too many folks in 4 wheel vehicles who think they are a "good" or "safe" driver, but who are anything but. A lot of truck drivers fall in this category too. I blame ignorance or apathy for most of it. Unsafe following, unsafe passing, impatience, arrogance. You could talk yourself blue telling them what and how they're wrong, and the only thing that will change is that your face will be blue. If they cause an accident, immediately all fingers are pointing at the truck driver. Their phonebook lawyer will finish things up. Then, company costs go higher, and a drivers looking for a new job.

Another form of disrespect to truckers that has emerged during Covid is the failure to provide restrooms for drivers at shippers, receivers and everywhere in-between.

Everyone wants, or needs their stuff right now, but why does that stupid contagious truck driver think he has to use our place to go to the bathroom? They can go somewhere else. Many times, the only "somewhere else" is offensive to other members of the public. Truck drivers are human, too.

 

#2. Yes and No. it depends on the regulation and which side of it you’re on. Those that make money facilitating and/or enforcing regulations are highly in favor. Those that are being regulated, possibly not so much. Some need boundaries to force them into a certain behavior, others conduct themselves in a prudent manner. Many of the regulations are nothing but a money grab. Many pay absolutely no attention to regulations regardless of whatever. You decide.

 

Trains have been "self driving" for decades, but every one of them has an engineer. How many times in the last year have my two truck navigation tools been wrong? How many road closures for accidents or construction or weather? I'm saying there will always need to be a human.

 

It will happen but when is anyones guess.

I've done a lot of research on it because I wan't to try and have some money invested in the right places to profit from it... especially since there's the possibility I lose my job. As others have rightly commented, trucks will need "pilots" for a while, maybe always. They just wont be steering 24/7 and doing monotonous driving tasks we are doing right now.

Self driving trucks will need access to a 5G network to do it well enough to be trusted with so much freight value. 5G technology is being deployed but we are having a lot of problems. We aren't getting half the range from 5G towers we thought we would, so the signal deteriorates rapidly.

That's just for starters, there's a bevy of other issues, GPS isn't perfect and 1/10 it's just god awful. Weather knocks out equipment on the truck designed for safety (aka idiot devices). When it rains heavily or snows my auto braking feature stops working. My early warning collision system doesn't work at all. It will bleep at me doing under a 14 foot bridge, which I can easily pass under. Also it wont bleep in time, even if there was a problem. So if you think about an automated system using this equipment and input its being given, well it's just not going to drive very well.

 

My job will never be replaced by a "smart" truck. Too many gravel roads, too much mud, too many unplowed roads, too many places with no cellphone service, too much real work.

If I was an OTR guy just running interstates between cities, I would be taking programming classes at a community college. My job would be in danger.

 

Even as OTR, considering how common drivers disrespect or even try to sabotage trucks, who do you blame when an accident happens and the driver is an AI?

 

Programmer?? Its always the trucks fault we've seen that since......well there were trucks