Well, here's a list of what I have to do with each and every load.
Arrive as planned either within a window or specific appointment time
Check in with security, providing credentials and information for load
Move truck and trailer to location specified, which will vary
Open doors and shift trailer axles for safe loading
Back into dock, or back into space to park trailer
Divergence: Sometimes I move to hook up to another trailer pre-loaded, Sometimes I have to go check in with a further shipping office for confirmation of load, sometimes I just bump dock. Sometimes I bump dock and have to disconnect FROM the trailer which requires getting out, lowering landing gear on trailer, pulling 5th wheel handle (Because air-operated 5th wheel releases do not work reliably) and disconnecting 3 different cables/hoses from the trailer, then pulling forward to a 6 foot gap between my truck and trailer. Sometimes I have to move outright to a different area to park the truck and wait to be called.
Get handed papers, or get called and go into shipping office to receive papers
Reconnect and/or simply pull forward
Close trailer doors
Shift trailer axles accordingly forward/rear to accommodate weight distribution as well as legality for states being transited
Confirm trailer axles are locked in
Move to guard shack and present paperwork
Watch guard seal trailer and lock trailer myself (Seals show it was not tampered with, my lock provides the security that you can't tamper with it)
Confirm my route and any specific instructions for the load (some loads are altitude gain/loss restricted, some have high value considerations and additional tracking, etc etc etc)
Start movement.
Unloading is basically the same thing, but sometimes there is an additional step of a contracted company that does the unloading and sorting of the load, as shippers will just package all the stuff on pallets with consideration for weight for both positioning within the truck and within each pallet's construction.. which means that you can have multiple products on a single pallet, and the consignee will need it broken down into individual pallets for either what product it is, or what product and where it's going. For that, I get told how much the lumper fee is, and I have to confirm with my dispatch the amount and write a company check for the lumpers.
I would totally love to have an autopilot circa what Tesla has now. I already have an anti-collision radar on the truck (although I dislike the way this specific BRAND performs compared to others) which also interfaces with the cruise control to keep me spaced off vehicles in front, brakes if someone cuts me off and tries to brake check me, etc. An autopilot where I could still monitor things circa Pilots, take over if I need/want to, and otherwise be able to reduce my stress and overall exertion through the most time and brain numbing part of the work day, would be nice.
Full automation requires more than they can do now. The only place that I can see it being quickly and effectively adopted is primarily in Line Haul operations for full load/less than load shipments circa Reddaway, Old Dominion, Fedex/UPS/USPS, and the like. These things go to major distribution centers in a hub/spoke arrangement, and they have both the workflow and real estate already on-site for doing load swaps between power units (You pull in with doubles/triples/whatever, drop it in receiving, unhook, check in, and go hook to your new set already built to go back to where you started) that having fully automated power units would be a boon.
Except that all of those places are pretty much Teamster union gigs, and I don't know how pleased the unions will be when their drivers are reduced to being yard jockeys instead of their normal full time gigs.
Point to Point full load, or even less than load, shipments like I do now, where I pick up from basically wherever (including middle of bumfuck nowhere to move hay, wood chips, potatos, ur mum, etc) and only stop between the origination and destination for sleep and/or fuel as necessary, with just as much variability and basic "not fucking designed for 53 foot trailers and not going to be changed FOR 53 foot trailers" location design.... that's a hard sell for a full auto truck.
Plus right now they're plotting on the order of a half mil for the truck thereabouts. That's no difference between current truck cost and a driver's pay with up to 10 years of experience, for the lifetime of a truck in megafleets (around 5 years, or just shy of 500,000 miles), so the only differentiation would be that the truck would be able to run day/night year round at a reduced speed and therefore fuel economy boost. It would be beneficial, but there's so many different situations on the road that fully automated trucks just wouldn't handle well. Sometimes I have to pull onto a 2 lane street and bring my tractor nose to nose with oncoming traffic to make them stop/back up so I can get through. Sometimes you have a complicated maneuver set due to accidents. Yearly it's winter and you may have zero visibility for regular road markings and have to go off intuition and experience to be on pavement. I have had the ONE major sensor on my truck (Radar transciever) clog up with ice, bugs, etc. Put on multiple sensors that can get fouled, with most having little to no design nor way to clear them other than a human with a ladder, squeegie and windex? One auto truck run through a jeruselem cricket swarm in New Mexico like I went through, would have it stranded outside of cell service with a full set of fouled sensors, and a 120$ an hour service call to come clean them from a road mechanic 4 hours away... which means you're looking at a >$2,000 bill to go clean that truck off on the side of a 2 lane road with minimal pullouts (if it didn't just foul and stop right in the roadway, to be rolled up on by the highway patrol and subsequently ticketed).
How is it going to manage weight balance or shifting the axles to get balanced. How is it going to manage bridge weights and lengths (Cali, for example, only allows 40 feet between the rear axle on the trailer and the attachment point on the truck due to weight and maneuverability). How is it going to handle tire failures. How is it even going to pre-trip, as trucks now get inspected daily to ensure roadworthy status. How is it going to be inspected during the CMV Blitz they do yearly where DOT cops will flag you into random rest stops to inspect you. How is it going to determine what/where it should be going in a weigh station. How is it going to handle load shift and securement failures for open deck transportation. How is it going to do the checks on the load every few hours as currently mandated by DOT for open deck transports.
We still have pilots in commercial aircraft, and there's generally a hell of a lot less interactions with anything in the air as a general rule over an entire day of flight than what occurs in a 2 hour shipment on the road.
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