Will we be replaced in the near future?

If they can make a robot as smart as a human, why not? It could use visual stimuli coupled with knowledge and problem solving skills to accplish any task a human could and more (human memory and intelligence is biologically limited)

Not saying it will be like will Smith in I robot next year, but give it time. Few hundred years, why not? Do you think people that lived a few hundred years ago could even begin to imagine life today?

 

Some probably could-) Da Vinci comes to mind.But you are right even people living in not so distant past ,say 60 years ago couldn't probably imagine today's life.

 

It's coming alright. Imagine no mileage pay to deal with, no bennies to pay. No preventables to wrestle with. Who do people sue? The robot? Hah. What are the shippers and recievers gonna do now that appointments are kept to the T and find that if the robot is late it does not comprehend the abuse that is meted out in the form such as being told to go away come back later in the week with new appt as a penalty disregarding and disrepsecting the fact that the driver has probably been committed to loading at another shipper later that day.

Robots cannot be issued tickets. Those go to the truck owner. Whoo hoo. Just try to inspect a robot. Hours of service are meaningless Robot can turn in 168 hour work week as long they are fed fuel. And never get tired. Or unsafe.

Robot, robot robot robot. Sheesh.

 

When all the jobs are being done by robots or other autonomous technologies, and humans are all idled and impoverished, there will be no one buying anything. So there will be no need for those technologies. One thing robots will never be able to run is an economy. People are the economy. If no one has money, there won't be no money to run the robots, or a need to for that matter. Hollywood has made dozens of movies that are cautionary tales about too much technology ruining human existence. Can't remember one believable movie wherein technology created a human utopia.

 

Can't find drivers at the rate they're willing to pay is the key. If carriers paid $175k per year they'd fill those 800,000 positions in 6 months. They'll never fill them at the $50-60k they pay now.
With that said that 800,000 drivers needed is bogus. If they were really needed rates and wages would rise dramatically.

 

They aren't going to save all that wage money. They will undercut each other and the rates will drop to the margins they have now.

 

Heard an interview with a farmer that wanted more fluid borders so he could hire cheap Mexican labor. He kept saying no Americans wanted his jobs and only Mexicans would work all day out in the sun. I kept thinking...at the rate you want to pay of course

 

Having come from a farming community, laborers from south of the border have been the main labor pool for years. Currently you have to request a worker through the CBP under the guest worker program. It will take 6-7 years before the request will be filled and that is if you do not specify anything other than unskilled labor. Depending on what position you fill, how hard you work, some of them make $70-$80 K a year, and most will buy a house within 5 years of arriving in the US.