Sorry, I should have been clearer.
I do mean automated trucking. I think that development is less than 30 years away. Self-driving cars are a functioning technology now, the main hurdles (not insignificant ones) being social and legal.
Like most human-replacing technology, where the industry still exists, but is now automated ( modern car factories compared to buggy whip manufacturers), I don't expect trucking to be 100% automated, but the human factor will be reduced significantly the next 30 years.
Vehicles will still need humans to gas, service, deal with theft and breakdowns, etc. It will likely start with truckers being able to sleep during trips, still one trucker per vehicle which decreases the down time of cargo by 30%. Then there will likely be one trucker per several vehicles travelling in a convoy. Potentially there could be "truckers" based in areas that handle vehicles as they pass through, rather than travelling with them.
Of course, as the costs of trucking goes down, the attractiveness goes up, so while it may take 1/4 of the manpower to handle the same cargo, the amount of cargo will increase.
I'm estimating a 50% decrease in trucking employment in the next 30 years, even as the amount of cargo doubles.
The trends are clear, more and more work that was previously done by humans are being shifted to automated systems. Factories with thousands of workers has been replaced by highly efficient facilities containing industrial robots and a few human operators, bank tellers by online banking, most parts of any logistics chain by different types of automatic sorting, moving, and sending mechanisms. Offices are run by less and less people as we're handling and processing fewer and fewer physical documents. In any area less people than before are needed to do the same work as before. The world is becoming automated.
These developments are not only here to stay - they are accelerating. Most of what is done by humans today could easily be done by computers in a near future. I would personally guess that most professions existing today could be replaced by affordable automated equivalents within 30 years. My question is: What jobs will be the last ones to go, and why?
Often education is pointed out as safe bet to ensure being needed in the future, and while that is true its not the whole story. First of all, in basically all parts of the world the fraction of the population with an academic degree is growing fast. Higher education will probably not be as good as a differentiator in the future. Second, while degrees in the fields hot in the future is hot in the future there is no guarantee that the degrees hot today will be of any use later on. Third, there is a misconception that highly theoretical tasks done by skilled experts will be among the last to go. But due to their theoretical nature such tasks are fairly easy represent virtually.
Of course as we progress technologically new doors are opening and the hottest job year 2030 might not even exist today. Any suggestions?