> ...but in 10-15 years when a full self-driving solution costs maybe $1k? It's a no brainer, especially for long haul trucking.
I once spoke with a highly-paid driver (used to be a programmer, using the gigs in truck driving to decompress because our industry generally has worse work-life balance than truck driving...chew on that for a bit) about the US logistics industry.
The driver was in high demand because they consistently tested drug-free, carried various kinds of specialized certs, was always on-schedule or always in communication about problems, and fixed many problems on their own. As I remember the explanation, there is some kind of trucking industry-wide database that contains every driver's trucking records, and it shows every ping of their record to everyone. Might have the details wrong, but the gist was every single time a competing trucking company pinged their record, they got a raise to stay without even asking. So they were in a good position to watch from the best of what the trucking industry could offer. Their contention after observing from inside the industry for a number of years is that the bulk of the US logistics industry is the train companies' to lose.
Placing enough sensors along the tracks and looking outward to the sides of tracks to detect conditions requiring trains to slow down way ahead of time, but otherwise clearing trains to run at much higher speeds than they are allowed to now, would go a long ways to fixing many of the train industry's delivery speed. Upgrade the tracks themselves and the rolling stock to boost the speed even more to match trucking's coast-to-coast delivery time, and there isn't much incentive to use trucks for those corridors rail serves.