Depends, do truckers have a strong political lobby? If no, they'll be in trouble. If yes, then they'll be guaranteed to exist for as long as they are funding lobbyists and politicians.
For fully automated trucking, I imagine no one has explored the security implications yet. These vehicles seem far too easy to hijack, redirect, or delay and steal the cargo. Take out the human factor and long-haul trucks are autonomous warehouses roaming the countryside.
Now. The GP point is, if in future thieves find ways to explore truck software and redirect the trucks then current statistics will change.
I'd also expect more "insider" help than usual. Probably many truckers will be transitioned to lower paying roles and will be bitter.
My point, which I stated poorly, is that automated trucking is a whole new class of problems from a security standpoint. I'm leaving some scenarios out deliberately. I haven't even given much thought to the problem, but I hope someone does.
An automated truck will lock itself down, and start taking high def video. Plus, if it has a satellite hook-up, it can contact the police even from outside of cellphone range.
I bet they have. Especially insurers.
Self-driving vehicles will going to prevent a lot of collisions which will in turn drive premiums way, way down. The need to insure unattended shipments is one mitigating factor that I bet they are thinking about.
Externalize the cost: call the cops when the truck surveillance detects something and have them clean up the mess.
43-0000 Office and Administrative Support Occupations 22026080 156.881
41-0000 Sales and Related Occupations 14536530 103.537
35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations 12981720 92.462
53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving Occupations 9731790 69.315
51-0000 Production Occupations 9105650 64.855
25-0000 Education, Training, and Library Occupations 8636430 61.513
29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations 8318500 59.249
47-0000 Construction and Extraction Occupations 5585420 39.782
49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations 5456640 38.865
39-0000 Personal Care and Service Occupations 4514960 32.158
37-0000 Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations 4426090 31.525
15-0000 Computer and Mathematical Occupations 4165140 29.666
31-0000 Healthcare Support Occupations 4043480 28.800
33-0000 Protective Service Occupations 3386360 24.119
17-0000 Architecture and Engineering Occupations 2499050 17.799
21-0000 Community and Social Service Occupations 2019250 14.382
27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations 1902970 13.554
19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations 1152840 8.211
23-0000 Legal Occupations 1075520 7.660
45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations 463640 3.302
Edit: I'm perplexed by the downvotes. Care to explain yourself?
The parent said the majority of the US states. [1] The premise there is - based on the data I've seen at least - in many states trucking is the most common specialized job. Sales and office jobs are non-specific as a super category. It doesn't make a lot of sense to compare something as extremely vague and varied as "sales" to trucking. Food prep & serving, does have some claim on the most common job, although that's generally a much lower tier of work in terms of pay and upside potential (fry cook, cashier or runner at McDonald's vs making $80k a year long-haul, not very comparable skill-sets).
And you didn't go any deeper on the numbers in response to large differences between states in employment (given the parent proclaimed "in the majority of US states"). For example, in some states is transportation and material moving a more common job than food prep, and which states are those? (etc etc)
[1] According to NPR's Planet Money, truck driver is in fact the most common job in most states. They reach that conclusion by dumping the overly vague super categories such as sales.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
1 41-2000 Retail Sales Workers 8791750 62.619
2 35-3000 Food and Beverage Serving Workers 7355090 52.387
3 43-4000 Information and Record Clerks 5630810 40.105
4 29-1000 Health Diagnosing and Treating Practitioners 5143640 36.636
5 13-1000 Business Operations Specialists 4629810 32.976
6 53-7000 Material Moving Workers 4580950 32.628
7 47-2000 Construction Trades Workers 4216890 30.035
8 25-2000 Preschool, Primary, Secondary, and Special Education School 4133490 29.441
9 43-5000 Material Recording, Scheduling, Dispatching, and Distributi 4101520 29.213
10 15-1100 Computer Occupations 3997370 28.471
11 43-9000 Other Office and Administrative Support Workers 3940510 28.066
12 53-3000 Motor Vehicle Operators 3934070 28.020
13 35-2000 Cooks and Food Preparation Workers 3190940 22.728
14 37-2000 Building Cleaning and Pest Control Workers 3174220 22.608
15 43-3000 Financial Clerks 3133030 22.315
16 29-2000 Health Technologists and Technicians 3018820 21.502
17 49-9000 Other Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations 2836540 20.203
18 39-9000 Other Personal Care and Service Workers 2820750 20.091
19 13-2000 Financial Specialists 2651370 18.884
20 51-9000 Other Production Occupations 2582350 18.393
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3832wx/occupat...
And yes, I have not broken this down by state, let me see if I can find that data. It's also worth noting that the NPR article uses Census classifications, which may differ from those I've listed (though Census is one of the participants in the NAICS classification, itself shared between Mexico, the US, and Canada).
NPR are ... unclear in the extreme ... as what specific data fields and employment classifications they are using. Given the NAICS categories above, multiple states would have to show peak employment in one of the listed categories above "Motor Vehicle Operators". And yet, none do.
Same for farmers. The real small family farmers have no political power. It's the big farms that get laws made for them.
But, as a small farmer, I already see how unaffordable automation is. Tractors that are basically self-driving have been commercially available for decades, but it is difficult to pencil out unless you have a lot of acres to spread the costs across. I feel that the same will be true for self-driving trucks. The huge fleets will adopt it immediately, but small guys like me who only have to haul grain a few weeks of the year, it seems more cost effective to just spend some time in the seat.
Time will tell, but history tends to be a good indicator. I don't see truckers going away any time soon.