It might begin very soon

JIMNLIN wrote:
A trucker drives his rig to either a shipping point or the delivery point. He has to stop at the security gate out front for farther information or get out of his rig, once he is in the yard, and find a receiving/shipping person and get a dock number and a load/unload time. Sometimes the driver is told to leave and come back at another time.
I doubt the warehouse/customer is going to spend millions of bucks setting up a system to handle drivers free trucks.

I can see how a intermodel shipping yard like UP or BNSF could use driver less pony trucks to move containers around in those huge yards.

Capitalism will solve it for them.

If you want an old style driver, you will pay significantly more for deliveries and likely will not get guaranteed on time delivery.

Big warehouses will be happy to spend millions (though that's a big overstatement of the cost). If they are saving $1000 per delivery and they get 200 trucks per day...you can justify a pretty expensive warehouse upgrade.

But really, the systems we are talking about won't require physical upgrades for the most part. If a truck driver can get the truck in, the computer can do it. There may be an app that the warehouse manager has to keep track of...but lets say he's running behind, the incoming trucks may simply slow down 50 miles out from 65 to 55, so they arrive when the load bay is free.