Automated trucking, a technical milestone that could disrupt hundreds of thousands of jobs, hits the road

You know that universal sign we give truckers, hoping they’ll sound their air horns? Well, you’re going to be hearing a lot less honking in the future. And with good reason. The absence of an actual driver in the cab. We may focus on the self-driving car, but autonomous trucking is not an if, it’s a when. And the when is coming sooner than you might expect…
Steve Viscelli: As truckers like to say, if you bought it, a truck brought it.

Steve Viscelli is a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in freight transportation and automation. He also spent six months driving a big rig.

Jon Wertheim: What segment do you think’s gonna be hit first by driverless trucks?

Steve Viscelli: I’ve identified two segments that I think are most at-risk. And that’s– refrigerated and dry van truckload. And those constitute about 200,000 trucking jobs. And then what’s called line haul and they’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000-90,000 jobs there.
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