Will trucking be going any where years to come?

First companies that will go to auto trucks are the highest paying ones. UPS Parcel and Walmart are heavily involved.

 

If it's autonomous you're worried about I'd say the drivers and future-to-be-drivers in the current 18-25 range will be retiring when autonomous fully takes over.

No doubt the industry will look very different even 5 to 10 years out though.

 

I'd like to see them autonomously deliver a 14' wide load to a job site . . .

 

Trucking isn't going anywhere.

The quality of the drivers certainly is.

 

It'll come one day for the entire industry... Later for the specialized loads no doubt.

 

Look up "robot fails" on YouTube.
You'll be dying of laughter. I don't see trusting technology on open roads going well.

Ask anyone who works with advanced robots in manufacturing even, multimillion dollar robots go completely off the wall and start doing random #### sometimes. I've seen it first hand, it's funny in a factory. On the road it'd be terrifying.

 

Unless it's on rails, and even then, there will always be a human in the cab.

Forever.

He might be watching porn, eating Cheetos, and have an orange pecker, but will still be there.

 

Just wait til that autonomous mistakes a mini cooper for a big deerwith cars on its side

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/30/blimps28th-aircraft-freight Coming to a city near you lol

 

What many don't see is it hasn't changed and won't.

It is the same to the world except more trucks on the road.

This in turn came with improvements in safety, in ease of driving and an increase in comfort level with the trucks to allow any one to drive a truck. ALL of which has ruined it for people who view this as a profession with a limited amount of intervention by the government, now we have more rules, regulations and huge amount of liabilities that are cash cows when accidents happen because of the number of poor drivers.

What has really changed is communications. We now can book loads without talking to a person and all through the internet on a device that we put into our pocket. Instead of spending an hour on the phone for any load, we can see hundreds of loads and pick and choose what we want in a matter of minutes.

what's next?

Who knows?

Politically speaking we need to become more involved with our industry by voting and acting as if they work for us, but that's another long story that should be talked about.