Driverless? Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker

The $740-billion-a-year U.S. trucking industry is widely expected to be an early adopter of self-driving technology, with numerous tech companies and major truck makers racing to build autonomous trucks. This trend has led to dozens of reports and news articles suggesting that automation could effectively eliminate the truck-driving profession. By forecasting and assessing multiple scenarios for how self-driving trucks could actually be adopted, this report projects that the real story will be more nuanced but no less concerning. Autonomous trucks could replace as many as 294,000 long-distance drivers, including some of the best jobs in the industry. Many other freight-moving jobs will be created in their place, perhaps even more than will be lost, but these new jobs will be local driving and last-mile delivery jobs that— absent proactive public policy—will likely be misclassified independent contractors and have lower wages and poor working conditions. The findings in this report are based on in-depth industry research and extensive interviews with the full range of stakeholders: computer scientists and engineers, Silicon Valley tech companies, venture capitalists, trucking manufacturers, trucking firms, truck drivers, labor advocates and unions, academic experts, and others. Section 2 provides some basic background on the trucking industry and the development of autonomous trucks. Section 3 lays out a series of scenarios for how different kinds of autonomous trucks might actually be used, based on published reports and extensive conversations with technology developers. Section 4 suggests which trucking jobs might be affected by those scenarios and what the labor market impacts might look like. Section 5 concludes the report by suggesting a set of policy steps to help ensure that tomorrow’s trucking jobs are good jobs.

• Record URL:
  http://driverlessreport.org/files/driverless.pdf
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  University of California, Berkeley

  Center for Labor Research and Education
  Berkeley, CA  United States 

  Working Partnerships USA

  San Jose, CA  United States 
• Authors:
  • Viscelli, Steve
• Publication Date: 2018-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Glossary; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 73p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Economic impacts; Employment; Forecasting; Intelligent vehicles; Jobs; Labor market; Policy; Recommendations; Stakeholders; Truck drivers; Trucks
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Motor Carriers; Planning and Forecasting; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01680870
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 20 2018 10:57AM