I used to laugh at the idea of self-driving trucks, but a trip on I-80 changed my mind

I drove from Chicago to Omaha a couple weeks ago and counted over a dozen autonomous semis on the road. Three years back, I saw maybe one or two test vehicles. The change is crazy fast. These weren't just following a lead car either, they were fully loaded and running solo in the middle lane. It hit me that the company I work for, a mid-sized logistics place, just cut a whole shift of local dispatchers. My buddy who worked that job got moved to 'system monitoring', which is basically watching screens and calling for help if a truck gets confused. The tech isn't coming, it's already here and scaling up. Has anyone else in transport seen their role shift from doing the work to just babysitting the machines?

3 comments

3 Comments

sagecooper8d ago

My cousin drove for a regional carrier that started using those systems. He said his job went from managing his route and schedule to just being a warm body in the cab for legal reasons. The computer did all the driving, and he got written up once for taking the wheel when it made a bad merge. They told him the system was supposed to learn from that, and his job was to let it try. He quit a month later.

susan_adams8d ago

Sounds like the system was still in its training phase, which is pretty common for new tech. I mean, they need real world data to improve, but putting drivers in that spot is messed up. Your cousin was right to take over for safety, idk how they could write him up for that. Maybe it's just me but letting a computer learn during live traffic feels like a bad plan.

craig.alex8d ago

This is happening everywhere now, not just trucks. Companies are swapping real jobs for cheaper system watchers, and calling it progress. Feels like we're all just training our own replacements.