Truck Driving Jobs Myth Or Reality?

I heard from some news that in 10 years from now trucks will drive by themselves and all the drivers will be unemployed.Is that true?I want to be a truck driver too but I don't want to end up like that.I mean I can't find another job that allows you to travel in other countries.Do you know another job?I just don't know and I never found it.I always dreamed that I can travel in a lot of countries and see the world by myself but now when I see that AI(Artificial Intelligence) will replace drivers I don't know what to do or say. Am I dreaming?10-15 years ago there were no smart trucks and drivers could easily drive all over the world.What happened?Has the economy become more poorly?

Personally I wouldn't worry about self driving trucks, planes still require a pilot and there is less stuff to run into in the air. As far as seeing the world that will be a little difficult due to oceans but you can definitely go coast to coast in the US and Canada.

Short answer is NO. Long answer, AI will not replace real truck drivers in our lifetime. We humans have the amazing ability to throw AI a curve ball each and every time self learning AI and programmers think they have it all figured out. AIs driving with other AIs not a problem. Put a human in the mix and it all goes the heck. LOL

Thanks guys,by the way I'm in Europe and I'm 19.I know that I have a long time until I reach the age of 21 but I'm interested if a driver can live from his salary and not by his per diem pay.Is it possible?How much do they earn at first with 0 experience?

No one?Not even a little provided information?

20 years ago the USPS created "lights out facilities" meaning no people to sort the mail only mechanics to fix the robotic machines. they needed so many $90,000 mechanics that it was cheaper to pay the $50,000 employees to sort the mail. the three test facitities closed.

20 years later, robots were supposed to load the trailers...but it still cant work and created over time for the workers. for 18 years i heard i was losing my job. never happened.

i have little faith in any end of job predictions

We don't have a clue about driver pay in Europe. In the U.S. a first year driver can expect to earn approximately $40,000 dollars. Now, whether he can live on that or not is completely up to him. Many of our members here have earned up to $50,000 their first year.

The thing about truck driver pay that is important to understand is that it is performance based. My dispatcher once told me that he had drivers getting paid the same rate of pay, but their total pay out at the end of the year was very different. That's simply because drivers get paid based on what they get accomplished.

Here's an article that might help you understand this concept a little better.

Show Me The Money!

Rainy D and I each have threads on here posting our first year's salary. My company recently started offering per diem and it has increased my take home pay each week.

As far as self driving trucks go, look up Dick Tracy's watch. It takes a very long time for reality to catch up with science fiction and old comic books. I would safely say that if you started trucking in the USA at 21 and drove and invested wisely for 20 years, you could retire at 41 and see the world. Good luck.

Check this out also:

Self Driving Trucks Are Not Coming Anytime Soon

I listened to a podcast where a scientist did a great job of describing AI capability in terms of where it falls in terms of life on Earth. The very best AI barely achieved the capacity of a ****roach's brain, in the context of detecting the right input in the real world and then making decisions based on the input. In terms of computer science, that's a remarkable achievement. In reality, it's usefulness is obviously not that great. The processing power to reach a ****roach was immense, and since we're about to reach the very limit of how thin we can make those processors in an effort shrink the size down, it would take a totally new concept in information processing to reach something amounting to the processing power of a small lizard. I don't know if anyone else heard about that IBM AI that got plugged into Facebook as a test, and as it took in all the language on there it became racist and malevolent. IBM ended that test immediately upon seeing that happen. There is so much abstract reasoning involved in driving anything that we can reasonably expect that trucks will not be free of the need for onboard human input. I've seen some short runs that were hailed as a success, but how likely can that become so reliable as to really justify putting many of those trucks out there with the general public and expect acceptable results? It will take a heck of an engineering marvel to get investors and regulators to accept that risk, at least until it can be proven reliable. What is the threshold for failure, and how much of the various consequences will we accept given that there will be some issues and accidents? I think that drivers will have jobs driving for a very long time, and maybe we can achieve another form of transportation technology before automated cargo hauling becomes reliable enough to be widely deployed.