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Self-Driving Cars Could Cost America's Professional Drivers Up To 25,000 Jobs a Month (cnbc.com)
The full impact of self-driving cars on society is several decades away -- but when it hits, the job losses will be substantial for American truck drivers, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. From a report: When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research. Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today's employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.
We wouldn't need the thousands of self-driving trucks if the rail freight system could compete with trucking, but the deck is stacked against them.
Rail companies maintain their own "roads" and rights of way. Trucking companies buy trucks, hire drivers as cheap as possible, then turn it all loose on roads built with your tax dollars. One of my Civil Engineering prof's told us that one truck does the damage of 10,000 cars. As a highway engineer, I saw that first-hand. Then trucking companies have the gall to put stickers on the back of the trucks that say, "This truck pays an average of $5,123 dollars per year in over the road taxes." Yet they probably do 50 times that in damage.
It's time we cut off the trucking company fat cats and charged them to use the interstate roads. That would bring the rail companies up to parity. Trucking companies would just service the last few (or dozen) miles from the rail hub to the source/destination. And we all get lower taxes and less highway construction.