Possible self driving trucks by 2020?

Trucks still have to move the containers from the ports to points throughout the USA.
It's the Longshoremen that take a beating and lose their job.

 

Well, I didn't go into much detail to keep it short and I tend to be long winded. Ultimately the real question is if not driving a truck then what? Unloading trucks, stocking shelves, flipping burgers? The day there's no drivers is the day none of the rest of those jobs exist either. All hail Spacely's Space Sprockets, just call me George.

It isn't enough to just drive down the road. Someone has to lower/raise the landing gear, open/close the doors, connect/disconnect the air/electrical. You could put motors on the landing gear and doors, some type of automated connect/disconnect. I've yet to see a truck with any of that. There's also inspection. Lord forbid the mechanic forget to put the lug nuts back on after changing a tire, but if he does someone needs to catch that before the wheel falls off. That's the point of inspection, avoid needless accidents and traffic delays due to equipment failures. So maybe that truck can deploy a drone to inspect itself, call it Rosie.

When you get past the gee whiz there's just a whole lot of details that raise serious questions. They actually require big data pipes into the clouds. There's still a whole lot of places with no cellular coverage and when I have a data connection I'm often lucky if I can stream Netflix. There's a scaling problem. What you can do in San Francisco is a whole lot different than what you can do nation wide. What you can do in a subdivision of multimillion dollar homes and in a run down trailer park is two world's apart as well. Guess which one is closer to that factory?

Realistically within 30 years places like FedEx will be running autonomous trucks between major facilities. They have economies of scale. They can build facilities specifically to launch and catch those vehicles. I went into a place that unloaded 40K pounds of tires by rolling one tire at a time off the back. They got two shipments a week. They had me put into a dock for straight trucks that left my tractor blocking a traffic lane. With just two loads a week they couldn't recoup their costs to expand or relocate to accommodate an autonomous vehicle in tens years if the shipping was free.

I stand at windows watching people use terminal emulators to access text mode applications. That's 80's technology and that's what they're running their business on. They haven't managed to move to the 90's and get a GUI yet, but they're going to leap straight to the Jetson Age. I stand in the shop as someone from IT replaces yet another keyboard so they can poke at it with two fingers. Why are they using a keyboard and mouse? I got a fault code on my truck but onboard diagnostics isn't displaying it but they can't read it either because their laptop broke. Foiled again. Software costing thousands can't be used for lack of a laptop costing hundreds. I went into a shop on the road, they hooked up their computer and told me there was all kinds of things wrong. I had to go through it and explain it all to them before they could fix the problem I was there for without my help.

That isn't fault people. They're best they can, or trying to make a quick buck. It's just to point out layer upon layer upon layer of crap that all has to change. It just goes on and on and on. I look around at the primitive world I live in and think dream on. It's always somewhere over the rainbow where this miraculous world exists and not where I'm at. Even when I was technical architect on a $20M machine that was a technical wonder of it's time we were running primitive crap on it. IT is just a full of idiots as any other job but they're, somehow, someway, going to do all the miraculous stuff when they can't get your dispatcher off a terminal emulator and clear up to the 90's.

 

A self-driving truck just drove from Los Angeles to Jacksonville

 

It’s been since the early ‘90s when I got my CDL. Back then you could get them at 18 for intrastate only. If that’s still the case, I’d try to get my CDL at 18 and do local stuff until I hit 21. You’ll already have 3 years experience to go on by the time you are eligible for OTR.

 

With militaries starting to roll out sea drones and commercial ships crashing and getting hijacked by pirates its only a matter of time till ships are 100% unmanned. Ports are pretty automated already. Thats where autonomous trucks could be used first...port truckers are already getting screwed 9 ways to sunday and they only carry cargo a short distance

 

When is your birthday? Can't be too far away.

 

OK, you'll be ready; plenty of time to prepare.
Some private cdl schools will let you attend as young as 18 yrs. old. That takes money though and jobs are very limited, plus you can't drive outside the state until you're 21.
Google : Free CDL Practice Tests Oklahoma
There's also an app. you can download with the questions & answers: DMV Genie CDL Practice Tests.
Get all the endorsements including hazmat; this gives you more opportunities in the future.