Will Automous Trucks End The Truck Driver?

Autonomous driving capabilities have been well-demonstrated in millions of Tesla cars, as well as in robotaxis fielded by companies such as Cruise, Waymo and Baidu. But the most economically powerful use case for self-driving isn’t in taxi service, it’s in the trucking industry. 3.5 million Americans drive trucks, earning an average of over $40,000 a year. It’s good money for a craft that requires minimal formal education and upfront training. Those skills are not likely to be easily transferable to some other line of work once the robots take over. California is proposing a law that would effectively prohibit self-driving trucks. Many pundits feel that this is only a delaying action, and the robotrucks are an inevitability. What then?

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