Leathers
Even as autonomous driving technology continues to advance, the freight transportation business will need more truck drivers in the future, not fewer, Werner CEO Derek Leathers told TT.
American Trucking Associations has estimated that the industry will need to hire 900,000 drivers over the next decade.
“I think that’s something that’s important for the industry and for drivers to understand,” Leathers said.
He compared the emergence of autonomous trucking to the rise of rail intermodal operations.
“There was all kinds of fear when intermodal really started to gain traction that it was going to decimate the trucking industry,” Leathers said. A couple of decades later, however, there are more truck drivers out on the road than there were back then, despite the growth of intermodal freight.