Comments By 18 Wheels of Steel

I'm in week 5 of training at the time of this post. The program is 20 weeks so I've got a ways to go still. But I just cleared a major hurdle today: The Vehicle Maintenance Exam. Basically, it is a 250+ point pre-trip inspection, including the brake check, that must be performed by memory. It is a test that must be passed in order to continue on in the program. They will not let you drive their trucks if you fail this portion of the course.

After putting in my time in the truck lab to learn all these parts over the last 4 weeks, plus watching various Youtube videos of pretrip inspections, and a fair amount of studying at home, I was still pretty nervous when I went in to take the test. Not surprising, considering my continuation in the truck driving program was on the line. Thankfully, my fears were for nothing as I crushed the exam completely and totally, scoring a 100%!

Next week, I will take to the range to learn basic procedures such as backing, hooking and unhooking, etc. Right now, however, I am flying high after today's major victory.

Think of it this way: has autopilot eliminated the need for skilled pilots?

This is true. I know I'm just probably being a worry wart. I'm just pumped about my career choice, even though I know it won't be all sunshine and rainbows, especially at first. I'd just hate to see something out of my control come along and ruin it. It doesn't help that good paying blue collar jobs disappearing in part due to automation is like the main story of my location.

I hope not. I want a career not a job, that is why I am choosing trucking. I love to drive and driving for a living seems perfect.

That's what I'm saying. It's perfect. I love to drive, I can drive for long periods of time without a problem. (sure beats just riding while someone else is driving. Boring!) Being by myself for weeks isn't a big deal since I am a solitary person by nature. Either way, I'm pretty much committed now. But it would be pretty lame to have to go and switch careers after training then doing this for awhile.

I've been in my Truck Driving course for a few weeks now. It's a 20 week course put on by a local college. So far, I've been pretty happy with my choice. We were assigned to do a little research into the truck driver shortage. What I saw was great, at first. Something like 80,000 drivers needed, and expected to grow to something like 180,000 by 2024. Great news for someone wanting to get into a truck driving career, right? A truck driver's salary should remain strong.

Until I noticed a little caveat about ways the industry could solve the problem. There was the expected solutions: higher pay to entice more people to take up driving, offering more time at home, etc. But what caught my eye was the idea for self-driving trucks. At first glance, I thought this was silly. Letting a computer control an 80,000 lb rig? Turns out that they already exist. Automated driving tech actually seems to be quite refined. My endless optimism, it seems, has been somewhat blunted.

So I turn to the experts. Is this something that threatens to knock out the truck driving career? I have no doubts that at some point in the future, technology will get to the point where drivers will be no longer needed. But how long? 10 years? 20, 50, 100? I would hope to get a good 30 or with some good fortune 40 years out of this gig. After screwing around for 10 years of my adult life, it's like I got myself together, committed to a good career choice, and it would be the worst luck to have something like this come along and screw it all up.

Or perhaps I'm just overthinking the whole deal, something I've been known to do. It's super easy now that I feel like I finally got things going in the right direction. When things are going well, it is real easy to start thinking about things that could screw it up.