Will we be replaced in the near future?

They're not going to happen anytime soon.

It costs what, say 0.50 per mile to pay a truck driver. Work that out to any commodity and what the expense is to the end user. It is very little. Say 40,000 pounds of product even all the way across the country at 3000 miles. Driver earns 1500. 1500$ ÷ 40000 = 0.0375 per pound. Do you think Americans are willing to pay a few cents more for their product, or rather save the money and share the highways with huge driverless vehicles? Considering we still pay pilots and engineers, I don't think we have much to worry about. Add in the cost to build the infrastructure and consider the money will be spent on many other projects before paying truck drivers reaches the top of the list ... also who holds the liability when wrecks occur?

It's easier to just pay the driver.

 

The real question is will they be armor plated?

 

As long as people can make profit off morons.......NO

 

I'll chime in on this... Do I think the industry will be 80% automated within 35years? Yea, but so will a large portion of all industrial jobs. I come from a family of farmers, and John Deere has commercial farming software that enables a single driver to operate a tractor with 4 others following in tandem. Is automation coming in the next 10 years? No... Injury lawsuit potential will block that. My advice to the average joe? Invest in Farmland! Even a hundred acres bought for 50k will always produce crops, they can eventually replace most jobs with automation, but they can never create more land to support the population.

 

I'd love to see a driverless truck negotiate the streets of San Francisco to unload a bulk tanker in a tight rail yard... Can't replace me with that

 

You might (in 10 years or so) start seeing piloted trucks on very limited routes (think the I-95 corridor) with low-paid lackeys sitting in the driver seat to take them from the dropoff point to the shuipper, etc.

Actual autonomous trucking is decades away at best, simply because of infrastructure costs. Also, remember that trucking companies are the LAST adopters of new tech. We will have 80% autonomous passenger vehicles 20 years before it's commonplace in trucking.

 

Just remember, when snow and ice accumulation season begins each and every winter, self-driving technology will be less then useless. Any camera technology that requires lines and curbs be visible at all times in order to "steer" accordingly, can not operate in conditions where curbs and lines are not visible, for whatever reason, and wherever, open road or in-town.

How many times has your forward visibility been severely hampered by ice-covered windshields ... keeping lenses 100% clear, 100% of the time is going to be a huge problem to overcome. GPS technology is simply not 100% accurate to the inch, 100% of the time either. What happens in power outage situations where traffic control devices are inoperable?

It will be an "ideal weather/situation" technology, at best and as such will always require a human be on board at ALL times until such time as we have "Jetsons like" craft operating above ground with some type of hover technology.

 

The technology actually requires magnetic/electronic sensors in the road to really work. And power-outage situations are a non-issue as these trucks will ONLY operate on the interstates.

The tech is almost there right now to have MOST highway trucking done by drone. What's missing is about a TRILLION dollars in infrastructure spending and a trucking culture that isn't the LAST adopters of ANY new tech.

 

Agreed, but the likes of Tesla and others are trying to make it work without embedded infrastructure technology. And also agreed, this technology can only be reasonably expected to work on "open roads" (in remote, rural areas) meaning a driver will have to be there, regardless to "finish the trip".

Frankly, I'm all for the "driving assist" technology but I'll be dead and gone long before it becomes optional or standard equipment on class 8's

 

And there will be tanker drivers to haul the spoils.