These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn how be

These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn how best to navigate through certain areas Isn't that what we were told about taxi services when Uber started taking over? But it turns out that people prefer a driver who follows a GPS and you know he's 5 minutes away than a more expensive local driver that might come in 5 minutes or might come in 50 minutes (or not at all), all you know is that the dispatcher said "He's on the way" optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. Most of this seems like something logistics software can do - and it can optimize across a fleet instead of optimizing for a driver. They also learn which customers pay promptly, which ones provide their loads in a way that’s easy to get on the truck, which ones generally have their paperwork in order, etc. Also things that the business office would do -- if you want the cheap automated truck delivery, you'll pay on time and have your paperwork ready. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc Again, this is something that shippers would change if they want the automated truck delivery. They can either pay to make their dock automated-truck-accessible, or they can pay a human driver to back it in. And those human drivers will become more scarce and expensive as time goes on. I would expect that even if trucks became autonomous, a lot of truckers would survive the transition because people would still need to do a lot of that stuff. Initially, sure, but long term, economics will win out.