Maybe some jobs will be replaced, but the industry is facing a shortage of truck drivers. One of the most common job listings on Craigslist is for truck drivers with paid training. The lifestyle of a truck driver can be brutal and unhealthy.
Trucking is not an easy job. The working conditions are poor, you have to pay a fair amount of any benefits out of pocket, and like most "gig" economy stuff the logistics companies are driving a relentless rate towards the bottom.
Not only that, those truck drivers are licensed, meaning it's a skilled profession. Chances are if they find work, it will be in an unskilled position which pays significantly less with less benefits. That's sucking a whole lot of capital out of the middle class and the economy.
What does a country look like without a solid middle class? Broke and on fire. A reckoning is coming and our politicians are pretending it isn't, or they have no idea what to do about it.
That’s not really what happens though. Truck drivers don’t disappear. They just become “truck driver attendants” who serve only to attend to occasional human requiring edge cases. They don’t require a commercial driver license and they pay minimum wage. And thus the lower class grows.
I can't think of many worse jobs than truck driving. Long hours, low pay, threat to lose your job from self-driving cars, high risk... These guys deserve a higher salary and they should start looking for something else to do IMHO.
You can't just grab some random worker and hand them the keys to a truck. Truck driving requires a lot of expensive training, and it's a shitty job that not many people want to do anyway because it takes them away from home too much.
It’s not like many kids are planning to be truck drivers. It is a job that people wander into. The bigger problem will be those that are doing it when the job goes away, as well as continued pressure on the job market as a whole (what will pop up to replace the portion of the labor pool that would have driven trucks before).
"I still think driving a truck as a profession will be a thing of the past within 20 years or so."
I hope so. Trucking is one of the toughest professions for a person to endure that I've ever seen. It destroys a person's body and mind...and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.
First of all Truck Drivers are just fraction of the drivers fleet. There are cab drivers, schoolbus drivers and so one. The number is much higher.
Second of all you need to factor in that many of those jobs are not actually providing a full salary but are instead temp jobs with no special security attached to them.
Thirdly. The use keeps moving the goalpost on what they consider a job.
A job is not just a job. It comes with an income. An income which for most people is decreasing or stagnating.
The labor market for truckers has been absolutely horrible for a few years now. Thousands and thousands of truckers have lost their jobs. We won't run out of truckers in this country any time soon.
Yup, I work in logistics. Driver wages have been stagnant at best, dropping at worst for many many years. Outside specialized drivers, it's a horrible career choice.
This sounds like a blatant "grass is greener" mirage. Guys drive trucks
because it's all they can do to support themselves, not for any other reason.
When I fall asleep at my terminal, I get fired. When I fall asleep at the
wheel, I die.
reply