Driverless?: Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker

Will autonomous trucks mean the end of the road for truck drivers?

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, my new research 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.

Throughout this transformation, public policy will play a fundamental role in determining whether we have a safe, efficient trucking sector with good jobs or whether automation will exacerbate the problems that already pervade some segments of the industry.

Trucking is an extremely competitive sector in which workers often end up absorbing the costs of transitions and inefficiencies. Strong policy leadership is needed to ensure that the benefits of innovation in the industry are shared broadly between technology companies, trucking companies, drivers, and communities.

The findings below 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.