
American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots - dankohn1
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12342764/autonomous-trucks-employment?utm_campaign=drvox&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
======
tuna-piano
The other question you need to ask in order to understand this future
scenerio:. Shipping costs will significantly decrease, what will consumers and
shareholders spend the extra money on?

Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats,
TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.

It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people
out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"

Imagine telling a farmer in 1850s America, when 64% of America farmed, that in
2016 only 2% of people would be farming! Imagine the distopian horror (1)! If
we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine
the state we'd be in today.

Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other
endeavors, leading to the enormous improvement in production, income and
standard of living since then. If 64% of people still farmed, or 2% farmed and
62% were on UBI - who would have had the time or incentive to create
computers, software, advances in healthcare, etc?

I'm not claiming the transition is easy for someone who's laid off - it can be
an extremely tough process, but it's absolutely necessary for the improvement
of humanity.

(1) [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-
lowest-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-
since-1850-s.html)

~~~
themagician
Don't kid yourself. New jobs get created, but fewer. And many of those who
lose their jobs don't get retrained—for a myriad of reasons—and end up leaving
the workforce entirely. Many just end up on long term disability because it's
the only path they have.

Jobs are disappearing. They aren't "coming back" in greater numbers. And the
new jobs, by and large, aren't for the previous workforce.

We already live in a world where many jobs are unnecessary. A large portion of
government jobs are, essentially, welfare jobs. One of the systematic reasons
of for the expansion of government is "job creation". Politicians will create
jobs, but those jobs add nothing to society. We've got people pretending to
work a job to collect a paycheck. It's welfare.

The industrial revolution replaced muscle with machine, but brainpower was
still a required input. There was a clear shift: from doing the work to using
a machine to do the same work, but faster. There was enough demand that things
didn't collapse.

The current shift is replacing both muscle and brainpower. Outside of creative
jobs, what is left for the human to do? Make the brain smarter? We are already
entering into a time where the machine makes itself smarter without the advent
of the human.

New jobs will be created, sure. But those jobs will not be for the 1.8 million
truck drivers. Instead the government will likely end up soaking it up through
one program or another. Tens of thousands will end up in welfare jobs.
Hundreds of thousands will end up on long term disability. The numbers aren't
small.

UBI is an inevitability. You've got some 40 million people on food stamps,
about 9 million on disability. Millions more working pointless government jobs
like directing people from one TSA employee to another. At what point to we
recognize that the future does not look like the past?

~~~
atemerev
UBI is inevitably doomed, because the equation doesn't hold.

You are right that ongoing elimination of jobs is a problem leading to huge
social unrest, and UBI fits the bill to be a good solution for this.

The only problem with UBI is that it is unsustainable and therefore
impossible. The balance just doesn't check out. The mere retirement schemes
are in grave danger of collapse; the money there are long spent. UBI is huge,
and there is no way to get this kind of money from anywhere (even if you strip
away all capital from the top 1% and send them to labor camps, as it was done
elsewhere, the money from this will fuel $1000/month UBI for about 2 years
tops).

Antigravity would be an excellent solution to our space travel challenges, but
we don't know any way to make it work. It is exactly the same with UBI.

~~~
themagician
People will have to adapt to a new way of life. We are going to move into a
world where full employment means 50% of people don't work, because there is
nothing for them to do. Like the computer, the cost of everything will begin
to decline rapidly when general purpose robots and automation take over human
tasks. The UBI equation may well balance. When there are no human costs the
only cost is energy. In theory, you will need far less income.

Honestly, I'm excited to see what happens as it will happen in my lifetime. 30
years ago we had the first general purpose computers. Look at where we are
now. Today we have the first general purpose robots. Imagine where we will be
in 30 years. It's hard to imagine.

Drivers, construction workers, doctors, lawyers—it's all going to be
dramatically different 30 years from now. Forget the US. All those jobs making
everything from iPhones to t-shirts will also be at risk. When you don't need
specialized equipment and you can buy a robot that can make t-shirts for a few
thousand dollars you don't need the human anymore.

If not UBI, then what? What do all these people do?

------
ufmace
I'm skeptical about the timelines of these reports. Certainly we'll never see
all 1.8 million drivers lose their jobs overnight. These guys are predicting
auto-truck apocalypse in 5-10 years, and we still don't have a single
commercial system on the road that's capable of even lightening the load on a
driver, much less replacing him. I think truck automation will go in 2 ways at
the same time, and we can watch the progress of each:

Systems to ease the strain on independent drivers. Ones that can cruise on the
highway without supervision indefinitely, but need help with city streets,
parking, maintenance, loading and unloading, keeping manifests, dealing with
whatever company is loading and unloading the cargo, etc. They may need
somewhat fewer of this class of driver, since the trucks will be able to run
more continuously and there will be less need for second drivers and probably
fewer trucks. Motels and truck stops will hurt some when the truckers can
sleep while the truck drives instead of stopping. I think we're at least a
decade away from this existing at all, much less being common.

Full automation for tightly integrated logistics chains. Maybe the Wal-Marts,
Amazons, Fedexes, and other huge companies that own the entire logistics chain
will be able to figure out how to use fully automated trucks, that can drive
from one company facility to another, complete with parking and maneuvering,
driving local streets, and letting other company systems handle the logistics
of loading and unloading and keeping track of what items are where. I bet at
least one of them will start experimenting with something like this in the
next 5-10 years, but probably at least 20 years before it works well enough
for them to cut down on the number of drivers they employ.

There will be job losses, but it will be slow and gradual. There should
hopefully be plenty of time for the economy to adapt, and hopefully either
create new jobs for all of these people to do, or move towards something like
UBI. I think we'll have to have a massive cultural shift before anything like
UBI would be considered or even possibly make sense.

~~~
galdosdi
I dunno. Even if "all" the first generation can do is freeway driving (and
let's say, not even urban freeway, just "easy" rural portions of freeway) that
seems like it still would make the vast majority of long-haul trucking jobs
vanish -- just by definition of "long-haul."

If you ship something from New York to Chicago by truck and it takes 14 hours,
maybe the first and last hour or so are getting in an out of the
source/destination cities. That leaves 12 out of 14 hours where the truck can
drive unattended, eliminating the need for about 12/14 of the truckers (or
their work hours) that drive that route.

It depends on what proportion of truck drivers today mostly do long-haul as
opposed to short haul. I have no idea.

~~~
ufmace
I'm not deep into the freight industry, but I have a few acquaintances who
are, and reportedly a lot of the actual shipments that take place are between
unrelated companies who only moderately trust each other. The freight company
is contracted by one or the other for the route, and usually the truck itself
is owned independently by the driver, with the freight company providing the
routes and organization of loads.

The truck owner isn't going to trust some random other driver halfway across
the country to drive his truck, even if he trusts the auto-driver to navigate
the freeway safely. The freight company isn't going to just trust the shipper
and receiver to load and unload the right stuff properly and not disturb
anything else on the truck. The shipper and receiver aren't going to just
trust each other and the freight company to ship the right stuff to the right
place - they all want somebody in the truck there who knows what's going on.

Basically, the drivers don't just drive, they're the glue that holds together
a whole complex system. Even if we had a perfect auto-drive truck today, it
would probably take decades to figure out systems that work well enough that
shipments work right without somebody who knows what's going on in the truck.
Like I said, I think the best we can hope for short-term is to take some of
the load of actually driving off the drivers, leading to longer trips and
fewer stops.

That's also why I said that the only companies in a position to really use
auto-trucks are those who already have integrated logistics chains, where
drivers who work for the company drive company-owned trucks between company
warehouses to move goods that the company either already owns or has taken
responsibility for tracking.

------
beyondcompute
Yeah, I've been thinking lately as well, why are we doing that? I mean as a
society? (I recall a phrase said by someone, that we are consciously building
a future nobody wants to live in.) What exactly are we getting from that?

Ultra-rich, namely car companies owners and shareholders, will become even
more rich. (Why are they doing it, by the way, don't they have enough super-
cars, mansions, yachts already?)

What am I getting from it? Basic goods will become 7% cheaper? Who needs that?
I am happy with current prices.

And then dozens if not hundreds of millions people worldwide will lose their
jobs and even more the very means for their existence. What will be the impact
on their families, communities?

I may be terribly wrong but it seems like yet another round of value
extraction by a small cohort of ultra-rich from general society.

There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration,
scientific projects, disease fighting, urban development, planetary computer
network, and so on.

And there are "comfort gimmicks" like refined sugar (and sugary drinks),
tobacco, toasters, etc. that produce effects from which people living
consciously and healthy would want to get rid of. And that are propelled only
by "economic factors". Which are a paperclip maximizer.

~~~
ardit33
I am pretty sure Luddites had very similar arguments back in the 19th century.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite)

If you look back at it, they were on the wrong side of history/argument.
Automation is going to keep going, no matter what, and it is mostly a good
thing. Yes, we might have few years of uneasy adjustment times, but things
will sort themselves out on the long run.

Think of it, one modern excavator is much better than 50 people digging
ditches. One operator with one machine replaced 50 manual workers, yet the
world didn't end, but I think it got better over time*

*Whoever protects manual labour vs machines, hasn't lived through deep poor communism. Most eastern Europe didn't have the capital or means to have productive machines in the workplaces, and they replaced them with human labour. Over time the stark differences between west and east became very apparent.

~~~
mavhc
Viewed from another perspective the Luddites were self employed, worked from
home, and set their own hours. They didn't want to work 8 to 8 in a dangerous
factory for a rich guy.

~~~
DigitalJack
Also, they were lucky to live past 40.

------
jondubois
The only people who really benefit from innovation are entrepreneurs,
investors and shareholders. The majority of the population are actually worse
off because of innovation (at least this is the case right now - The value is
just not trickling down).

The worst part of this will come when even highly educated people start losing
their jobs to machines... We will have a situation where entrepreneurs,
investors and company shareholders will earn massive incomes while many of the
world's smartest people (who fell through the cracks of the system) will
struggle to make ends meet - I think many engineers already feel that this
starting to happen now.

Money used to go mostly to employees, but as employees become less valuable in
the workplace, it will go mostly to shareholders (owners of capital). This is
why tax on income is making increasingly less sense - We need a tax on capital
holdings instead.

When you consider the massive role that luck plays in becoming a successful
entrepreneur, it does bring into question the fairness of the entire system.

The balance is shifting; we are moving from an economic system which not so
long ago seemed 'mostly fair' to one which is becoming 'mostly unfair'. Maybe
something like Universal Basic Income would be a good first step.

What we have now is no longer capitalism, it's increasingly an Oligopoly.

~~~
mavhc
The majority of the population now don't starve when there's bad weather, have
indoor plumbing, healthcare, don't die from playing tennis without socks.

What do we need money for now, and why? Houses mostly, because a) hand built,
and b) scarcity.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
In case anyone else was wondering about the tennis without socks death:
[http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/coolidge.asp](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/coolidge.asp)

------
MrFoof
> _1.8 million American truck drivers ... well-paying working-class jobs_

Those two items right there are exactly why they are being automated (in
addition to additional efficiencies and cost reductions). If companies can
eliminate those costs, they will if there's a way to do so. That is the
unfortunate reality.

What to do about the aftermath that affects actual people and families as pay
is reduced or eventually eliminated over the next 10-25 years? Well, that's
the new problem. Not one that the companies that employ truck drivers will be
looking to solve, but the one everyone else has to cope with in some capacity
-- whether directly affected by the reduced jobs, or indirectly affected by
those now looking for work in their community.

~~~
Osiris
Our education system needs to adjust to prepare our youth for highly technical
jobs. Instead of truck drivers we'll need engineers to build the automation
systems and programmers to write the complex software behind it.

~~~
PeterisP
There is no economic reason to automate things in order to replace 1.8 million
drivers with 1.8 million engineers.

Automation happens when you can replace 1.8 million drivers with 0.18 million
engineers.

~~~
lkbm
Except the extra 1.62 million engineers can be working on other things.

There's no shortage of useful things to build. It might be hard to think of
things for 1.62 million people to build, but the good news is you and I don't
have to think of those things ourselves right now. Those 1.62 million people
will be thinking about it too.

------
mwsherman
This is a perfectly reasonable intuition – that there will be large net loss
of jobs as trucks are automated – but we should not mistake the intuition for
evidence. There is a long history of believing that massive job losses are
imminent due to technological advance.

The problem with mistaking this fear for a fact is that it often leads to an
incorrect intervention. (I call this a WMD argument.)

We’d be much better served with much greater caution about what is actually,
observably, measurably true. In this case, we’d have to discover the yet-
unfound correlation between technical advance and employment rate.

------
sandworm101
It isn't that simple. The robots will never be a drop-in replacement for all
the various tasks that a "driver" actually does. Driving, negotiating the
vehicle down the road, isn't the entire job.

(1) People will still be needed for inspections and maintenance, however that
will be done. Much of that is now covered by drivers (the little things) and
cannot be automated.

(2) Insurance companies may demand that a human, a certified driver, at least
ride in the truck as backup/security and to deal with awkward situations.

(3) Boarder crossings will still need humans.

(4) Hazmat loads will still need humans on board for safety reasons.

(5) Winter driving. I have yet to see any autodrive system capable of
attaching chains or deicing a clogged brake line.

(6) Automation will open up new areas for drivers. By driving shipping costs
down, more trucks may hit the road, requiring more people for the jobs listed
above.

It may be a wash. The concept that every driver can/will be replaced by an
autodrive bot is naive.

~~~
drcross
Each are edge cases and nothing which can't be fixed by further work.

>The concept that every driver can/will be replaced by an autodrive bot is
naive.

The premise is that the driver aspect will be removed, the things you
mentioned are not strictly what a driver does.

~~~
sandworm101
> the things you mentioned are not strictly what a driver does.

They are according to the drivers I know. Long haul truckers are not like
pilots. They are much more involved with their rigs. They are actually
responsible for maintenance. They are the ones talking to the cops when/if
they hit an inspection station.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
It's not that every single driver will be gone - just a lot of them will be.
There used to be a lot of jobs at stables, horse shoe replacement, etc. Today
there are a lot of jobs changing oil, mufflers, tune-ups etc, that will go
away with the switch to electric cars, but one big truck can carry a lot more
freight than a big wagon train, and it needs less human labor. EVs will still
need work, they are designed and made by humans (at least for a while, ha ha)
so they can break like anything else. But you will need fewer humans probably.

I heard a story on NPR last night where an insurance company was planning for
new businesses, because they expect there to be less need for them with less
human drivers and a lot fewer accidents. Not next year, but in 10 years.

Just like one truck can do a lot more transportation than a wagon train with
10 hourses. You have some jobs taking care of trucks, but fewer than took care
of horse trains. Horses didn't travel as far, so you needed a lot more places
for them to stop and feed and water. I think it will hollow out the middle of
the us even more. I'm not crazy about that, I'm from that middle of the
country that already has continued to hollow out even without robot cars.

~~~
sandworm101
> Today there are a lot of jobs changing oil, mufflers, tune-ups etc, that
> will go away with the switch to electric cars.

But that isn't much of an issue with big rigs, nor with cars generally. The
engine/powertrain isn't a big maintenance item on new cars. Engine internals
are a very evolved and reliable bit of kit. It's the other things like brakes,
wheels, control systems and electrics are the source of most maintenance
costs. Those aren't going away with a shift to electrics. Some things will
transfer over (air filtration) and new things will appear (battery systems
maintenance) and, looking at teslas, powertrain maintenance will still be a
thing.

With autodrive, there will be a host of systems that now need new maintenance.
And, given that the driver isn't there to fix the little things on the spot,
there may be an increase in demand for mechanics that can travel to locations.

Lastly, any switch to autodrive may radically increase trips to the mechanic.
Plenty of cars drive around with engine warning lights on permanently. If you
know what the problem is, sometimes you just live with it. Just look at the
number of cars with blown headlights. An autodrive system might not be so
willing to tolerate faults. We may have to keep the vehicles to a higher
standard, increasing maintenance needs. (Also a great day for parts
manufacturers.)

~~~
drcross
Those points are all very weak. You seem to be in denial that the vast number
of automotive jobs are going to be eradicated even when they are reskilled to
cater for the newer systems that are coming.

~~~
sandworm101
And you seem to have converted to a tech that has yet to see the road. Come
back when we have some actual labour data, not speculation. I've seen many
automotive techs come (FI, antilocks, engine management, collision avoidance,
onstar) each with warnings about diminished labor costs, warnings mostly from
people who couldn't change their own brake pads. Yet little has changed.

------
blfr
Vox writers should be more worried than drivers. Driving a car, dealing with
other users on the road, making regulators happy are all difficult problems.

Meanwhile, I have already seen Reddit bots which summarise submissions. How
far off are from one that will rehash 2-3 articles and toss in an infographic
(created elsewhere)?

~~~
FooHentai
Kinda already happening, see: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-used-to-
write-apocalypse-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-used-to-write-
apocalypse-survival-guides) "the practice of article spinning, in which the
same human-written article is quickly reorganized and reworded to create one
or more additional “new” articles. (This is often done by software that has a
built-in spintax that replaces keywords in the text with synonyms.)"

------
FooHentai
What I don't get is, if we're so close to this becoming a reality, why isn't
the lower hanging fruit of train/locomotive automation already here?

That seems to be an order of magnitude simpler issue to solve, and yet we
don't seem to be there yet. Granted, forms of automation have penetrated that
industry - deadmans switches, automated signalling and such. But there's still
a human at the helm of every freight loco.

Smaller scale urban light rail deployments seem to have got close to full
automation, presumably due to being able to embed all the necessary elements
into the end-to-end installation of the system (signalling, stock,
cameras/sensors etc).

How can the kind of full automation that would put truck drivers out of work,
arrive before the kind that would put train drivers out of work?

~~~
maxerickson
Trains may be easier to automate, but 100 train cars already only have 1
driver. There is a lot less cost that can be removed there than for trucking.

Even just deskilling trucking offers the opportunity for bigger cost savings.

------
vacri
I don't know about the US, but here in Australia, truck driving is an "old
man's job". The _average_ age of a truck driver here is 47, apparently.
Automated trucks probably won't get here in time to dovetail with the natural
retirement of these drivers...

------
awjr
Once all the robots take over we'll probably need Universal Basic Income
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

------
pmarreck
What then? Progress, perhaps. ::eyeroll::

Disclaimer: In 1997 I was cut off by a semi (in the middle of trying to pass
him), who did NOT signal, on a 2 lane road (I-5 in California, speed limit was
85 or so), and ended up entering the ditch and rolling over 8 times and
shattered my hand (it's fine now, but it took a while). The driver never
stopped. I was lucky to walk away from that one.

Sorry, truckers, but your job can eat a bag of dicks.

Lest we forget, the only reason trucking is so huge is because train cargo
wasn't maintained (conspiracists say the oil industry lobbied for trucking).

~~~
merpnderp
Trucking is so big because it is far more efficient than trains. Lol trying to
just in time your inventory using trains.

~~~
gwright
This comment, together with its parent, is a nice example of a false-choice.
They both are built upon an assumption that there is some sort of total
ordering between cargo transportation systems. Trains are better. No trucks
are better. No trains are better.

In reality trains and trucks are part of an incredibly complex cargo
transportation system in which the most appropriate transportation mode is
dependent on the nature of the cargo, the geography of the source and
destination, the infrastructure available, the current price of fuel, weather
conditions, capacity constraints and on and on and on.

There is no total ordering of efficiency of transportation modes.

------
andersthue
It's scary and understandable at the same time especially when you multiple
the number of drivers with their salary, then you get a yearly cost of
72.000.000.000$

That's more than Uber's latest valuation.

------
femto
Is the answer an "Uber for robots"? Rather than an organisation owning all the
robots, individuals could own a robot and rent it out though an online
marketplace. It would be a continuation of the "owner/driver" model, without
the need to actually be a driver.

Maybe the problem is that if it's a lucrative opportunity the group running
the marketplace will want to keep all the profits for themselves, by owning
the robots and locking out small players?

~~~
nxzero
At scale, the value truckers provide is being a driver, not offer there
trucks. Yes, there will be companies that provide logistics as a service, but
it's hard to imagine a business based on a single robot.

------
xf00ba7
At some point everyone gets phased out. The question we should be asking, is
how do we prepare to transition people from one job to the next more quickly.
Coal miners are a perfect example. They're largely stuck. They haven't the
money to send their kids to school to do something else, nor do they have the
$$ to do it themselves (and likely not the time either). We need to rethink
(as a planet), how we deal with churn.

------
TrevorJ
Don't see it happening anytime soon. Self driving cars directly create
convenience for the end user, and the public may be willing to accept a few
crashes here and there in exchange for that convenience.

The first time an unmanned Fedex truck kills a family of 6 in a minivan people
will decided they would rather pay a few cents more to have trucks driven by
humans.

------
palakz
Robots might destroy jobs, but also create new jobs for us.

It's like innovative products - which might make some products obsolete but
also makes space for more innovation and other products that would've not
existed otherwise. :)

------
paulryanrogers
Entropy and diminishing returns from readily accessible energy sources will
kick in at some point. My guess is it'll happen before the robots are more
adaptable to changing road conditions than humans.

------
tfnw
[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-
futures/](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/)

Take your pick, or interpolate between them.

------
sevenless
I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do.
The reaction here on HN will be something to behold.

~~~
WalterBright
It's already happened. Those AIs are called compilers. Compilers get more
powerful every year. If you took them away, there aren't enough people on the
planet to do the same job with assemblers.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Brilliant comment! I guess devs are lucky to have enough jobs left to work.

~~~
WalterBright
What happens is pretty straightforward - the more powerful the AI devtools
get, the more is demanded of them. I look at programs I wrote 20, 30 years
ago, and am bemused by how trivial they look today.

I'm calling a compiler an AI tool, because what is it other than you type in
what you want the computer to do, and the compiler figures out how to do it?

------
andrewstuart
Civil war against robots is what will happen:

[http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2016/03/get-ready-for-
our...](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2016/03/get-ready-for-our-first-
civil-war.html)

------
galacticpony
Simple solution: Ban self-driving trucks.

I'm surprised that in the land of (apparently ) limitless legal liabilities,
so many people are bullish on self-driving cars, let alone self-driving
trucks.

You should be highly concerned that the push towards this by big players is
going to lead to laws where ultimately nobody will have to take up personal
responsibility for accidents anymore.

~~~
brianwawok
Grandparents killed by truck driver on speed. Robot drivers can't get her soon
enough.

~~~
convolvatron
its surprising this isn't mentioned more often. truck drivers do meth. its the
only way for them to stay focussed and awake driving across country.

so, from both sides, we have drivers with long term substance abuse problems
controlling really heavy metal whacked out of their skulls. and we have an
economy which can only function by effectively ruining people's lives by
turning them into machines.

if we were a remotely moral society we would be horrified

~~~
brianwawok
I THINK that truck driver on speed use is down since log book tampering has
gotten harder over the years, but I am sure it is not perfect. If you can only
work 11 hours a day and need a day off every 3 days of work, less incentive to
speed.

