Driverless vehicles are becoming more reality than science fiction.  It may be a decade before they're mass produced but we'll have to resist a panic reflex if we see an empty driver's seat in a test vehicle next to us on the highway.  

Daimler-Chrysler pioneered the semi-autonomous truck a year ago and continues to refine their concept .  Otto, a self-driving truck company acquired by Uber a few months ago, completed a 200 mile run with the driver in the sleeper berth.  They celebrated it as driverless, but the driver took over on local roads.  If the technology is perfected it seems like a boon for shippers, right?  Robot trucks won't take breaks and solve the driver shortage problem.  

Not so fast.  As cool as it seems to have no one holding the steering wheel, there's a lot of benefits that a driver provides that will disappear.  

With no driver, the responsibility to insure a load's security will fall squarely on the shipper.  Product temps, load locks, and managing seal integrity will be difficult if not impossible to verify remotely.  Who identifies if a driverless truck is over gross weight limits or not axled-out?  

A robot truck's efficiency increases without HOS (Hours of Service) limits but shippers will now have to be aware of the transit time and delivery window, and be able to identify when a delay has made a trip logistically impossible to meet the delivery appointment.   How will a driverless truck manage a refused or rejected load?  Shippers and receivers will suddenly bear the full brunt of documenting problems, negotiating and paying for lumpers, and other on-site decisions.  Without a representative of the trucking company involved in these events, the traditional checks and balances of many OS&D or claim situations will be thrown off.

There's little doubt about fuel savings and time efficiencies built into a driverless truck but that may not be enough until the technology for self-securing, self-weighing, self-correcting, self-monitoring, and self-paperwoking trucks is invented.