TruckingTruth Article: Self Driving Vehicles Are Coming Soon You Say? I Say Please Stop Clowning Us

Brett, will give you that one. and NOT BEING negative, however Tesla, MB, Volvo all these high tech outstanding companys spending huge amounts on R@D, make one wonder the motivation. We like our Siri too, but she can not cook!!!! be well.

Hey you need to send Siri to the dungeon lol.... but on a serious note the insurance companies do not even want to hear about 18 wheelers being on the country highways without a driver sitting behind the wheel. If that happens you will see them running through the mountains closing down their trucking departments. Ameliorating the safety features and the living spaces for the drivers is a welcome idea but driverless truck????????

Go back and read Brett’s article about this. He states the motivation behind it. One thing I’ve noticed is that they are marketing it hard. I watched a video a few weeks on it and they must have spent lots of money on that video cause it was so well done. They want more people to invest to get more money. It will be an endless cycle for many years.

I'm going to revive this thread from several years ago because I just read my one-millionth article about the future of the trucking industry and self-driving trucks. If you haven't read my article from five years ago, you'll feel a lot better about job security in the trucking industry if you do:

Self Driving Trucks Are Not Coming Anytime Soon

I'm not even going to quote the article I just read, because it mostly focused on "the driver shortage" baloney I've heard about since I started in the industry in 1993. The part I wanted to quote is the section by Avery Vise [emphasis added by me], vice president of trucking for FTR Transportation Intelligence:

Avery Vise, vice president of trucking for FTR Transportation Intelligence, said that autonomous trucks are on the horizon, “but we’re not talking about them having a significant amount of freight hauling until the second half of the next decade or later.” The best applications, he said, will be long, flat stretches along interstates, as opposed to short-haul deliveries in urban areas, where drivers will still be needed.

“I don’t think [self-driving trucks] reduce the number of drivers you need,” Vise said. “They just change the nature of the driver job, making it a local job where you’re home at night, which is where the industry wants to be anyway. If you want to drive a truck, you’ll always have a job.”

Think about what he's saying; it won't have an impact until at least the second half of the next decade or beyond - meaning late 2030's or 2040's. But let's not forget they've been saying we're 10 years away from self-driving trucks for 25 years now.

I don't know why CNBC, the publisher of the original article, allowed that tidbit of honesty to seep into the article, but in all likelihood, because they were the last two paragraphs of the article and they figured no one would get that far.

Folks, do not concern yourself with self-driving trucks. The only thing self-driving trucks have accomplished or will accomplish in the next twenty years will be to allow tech companies and universities to raise tens of billions of dollars in startup funding and research funding each year. That's the real impact of autonomous trucks - selling hope.

I still think we will have a colony on Mars first. No dilapidated infrastructure problems there yet.

I cant find the article at the moment but I read "somewhere" one driver would be technically driving a truck w self driving in front of him and one behind him. I will keep searching and hopefully post a link. Still do not believe even that will happen.

I agree with Brett’s evaluation on this topic. Too many hurtles to jump and not enough money, trillions not billions. As any driver that has to take I70 across Indiana knows, what is already built is not being maintained. And that’s just one of hundreds of stretches of National and state highways that are deteriorating faster than taxpayer money can fix them.

Sometimes I do wish, though, that “self backing” technology could be developed that would direct a truck to zero in perfectly on a loading dock with a sensor system. Some drivers would hate that because they enjoy the challenge of a difficult backup. The system could have an on/off switch for those who didn’t want to use it. Just a random thought.

I do like the new features being added to TT.

I cant find the article at the moment but I read "somewhere" one driver would be technically driving a truck w self driving in front of him and one behind him. I will keep searching and hopefully post a link. Still do not believe even that will happen.

That would be something to see. We already have turtle races that go for miles where one is going half a mph faster, or they keep playing leapfrog on hills due to weight. Now Imagine 2 truck convoys over 200 feet in length each and the amount of time that would take to execute a pass. Yikes.

I cant find the article at the moment but I read "somewhere" one driver would be technically driving a truck w self driving in front of him and one behind him. I will keep searching and hopefully post a link. Still do not believe even that will happen.

That term is "platooning".