The driverless truck
is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs
29/04/2016
Flexport’s
Ryan Petersen has
penned this rather brilliant post.
Honestly, are these
guys actually trying to do us out of a job?
Don’t you have some
freight to book instead?
In Tech Crunch recently,
on the future of a
trucking industry
dominated by autonomous vehicles.
It doesn’t look good
for drivers;
it perhaps appears
rosier for anyone concerned about
the driver shortage
crisis both in Europe and the US.
There will be vast
cost savings in salaries and diving costs,
because driverless
trucks can operate around-the-clock;
are expected to be
more fuel efficient;
there will likely be
less accidents;
and it goes a long
way to solving the driver shortage crisis.
But this is a far
more socially aware article than one might expect
from someone so
steeped in Silicon Valley mores.
Drivers make up 1%
of the US workforce,
and effectively
annulling those jobs over the course of a few years
could have a
cataclysmic impact on large sections of the economy.