I'm not deep into the freight industry, but I have a few acquaintances who are, and reportedly a lot of the actual shipments that take place are between unrelat

I'm not deep into the freight industry, but I have a few acquaintances who are, and reportedly a lot of the actual shipments that take place are between unrelated companies who only moderately trust each other. The freight company is contracted by one or the other for the route, and usually the truck itself is owned independently by the driver, with the freight company providing the routes and organization of loads. The truck owner isn't going to trust some random other driver halfway across the country to drive his truck, even if he trusts the auto-driver to navigate the freeway safely. The freight company isn't going to just trust the shipper and receiver to load and unload the right stuff properly and not disturb anything else on the truck. The shipper and receiver aren't going to just trust each other and the freight company to ship the right stuff to the right place - they all want somebody in the truck there who knows what's going on. Basically, the drivers don't just drive, they're the glue that holds together a whole complex system. Even if we had a perfect auto-drive truck today, it would probably take decades to figure out systems that work well enough that shipments work right without somebody who knows what's going on in the truck. Like I said, I think the best we can hope for short-term is to take some of the load of actually driving off the drivers, leading to longer trips and fewer stops. That's also why I said that the only companies in a position to really use auto-trucks are those who already have integrated logistics chains, where drivers who work for the company drive company-owned trucks between company warehouses to move goods that the company either already owns or has taken responsibility for tracking.