AFAIK There are no national union TL (Truckload) Carriers remaining (I believe CF was the last one), the LTL guys (Yellow, Overnite (now UPS) are often, but not always union.
Private fleet is FWIW a very very different ballgame - Walmart is considered by drivers "best in the industry" to work for - you need IIRC 5 years of driving experience before they'll even look at you.
Most TL drivers do not drive a dedicated route, and operate as a 'floating' fleet - even if you're on a dedicated board, while you might be hauling one customers crap - you're still likely to go to different places every time. Though as a non-dedicated driver, working out of the terminal I was out of, I regularly hauled Gatorade to Phoenix, or Coke to Phoenix, or Sports Authority to the Pacific Northwest. An example week for me was leave out of LA with Sports Authority (from Ontario area, CA) head up to Seattle then return with rolled paper out of Tacoma, or Coastal Oregon.
All of this freight was stuff that needed to move faster than the rail could take it, or where the destination was too far from a railhead, or the run was too short for the rail - or where simply, the company had the business from the customer and it could choose to route it via the railyard or via a truck, and it had an idle truck that needed to move to someplace else so it could haul freight from there.
While I do see a labor savings in automated driving - I dont see it as practical for most drivers - the biggest advantage I see is with expedited team drivers - you could replace one member of the team with the automation, and save some labor from the truck. So long as the automation is driving the open road portions especially at night, that could work out as a win win - you still need a driver to fuel the thing, check tires, open the trailer doors, etc - but perhaps the easier portion of the driving could be handled by the computer.
Private fleet is FWIW a very very different ballgame - Walmart is considered by drivers "best in the industry" to work for - you need IIRC 5 years of driving experience before they'll even look at you.
Most TL drivers do not drive a dedicated route, and operate as a 'floating' fleet - even if you're on a dedicated board, while you might be hauling one customers crap - you're still likely to go to different places every time. Though as a non-dedicated driver, working out of the terminal I was out of, I regularly hauled Gatorade to Phoenix, or Coke to Phoenix, or Sports Authority to the Pacific Northwest. An example week for me was leave out of LA with Sports Authority (from Ontario area, CA) head up to Seattle then return with rolled paper out of Tacoma, or Coastal Oregon.
All of this freight was stuff that needed to move faster than the rail could take it, or where the destination was too far from a railhead, or the run was too short for the rail - or where simply, the company had the business from the customer and it could choose to route it via the railyard or via a truck, and it had an idle truck that needed to move to someplace else so it could haul freight from there.
While I do see a labor savings in automated driving - I dont see it as practical for most drivers - the biggest advantage I see is with expedited team drivers - you could replace one member of the team with the automation, and save some labor from the truck. So long as the automation is driving the open road portions especially at night, that could work out as a win win - you still need a driver to fuel the thing, check tires, open the trailer doors, etc - but perhaps the easier portion of the driving could be handled by the computer.