I don't dumpster dive much more these days, it's not worth the effort.
Truckers do a lot of shit at truck stops that are not relevant to autonomous trucks. They buy greasy food, take a piss, get a blowjob from a hooker who just ate greasy food, carve the bugs off the windshield, replace the air freshener, take a nap, call the wife and tell her he misses her while avoiding talking about hooker blowjobs...
The shit that is relevant, such as checking tire pressure, oil level, carving the bugs off the camera lenses, whatever, can easily be done by the attendant. Not rocket science!
Also, refueling? En route maintenance. Stuff like that?
1) Truck signals for fuel.
2) Dispatch arranges for fuel delivery.
3) Truck pulls over when/where instructed.
4) Fuel truck pulls up, driver transfers fuel.
5) Profit!
Also, existing truck stops could simply employ drivers to bring autonomous trucks in for fueling and then send them on their way.
Same basic idea for maintenance.
Who said anything about replacing truck drivers with autonomous driving systems? Airplanes have autopilot, but they still require TWO pilots. Autonomous trucking systems will be no different. Somebody will have to drive it in city traffic and park it at the freight terminal, and take over when the autonomous system doesn't know how to handle a situation. The difference is that in a plane you usually have seconds or minutes to take over the system, whereas on a road with cars mere feet away, a trucker will have fractions of a second to respond and take over to a situation.
If a plane could simply pull over on the outskirts of town to meet its harbor pilot, long haul freight plane pilots would be on the block, too.
but he only knew German, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese.
"only"
Also keep in mind that if you can drive a car from the 50ties, you can drive one built in 2015, and inversely. Safely.
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