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Re: Trucker Shortage Opportunity for RRs? Not In the Long Run....
Author: BOB2
Date: 10-01-2016 - 12:05
The automated truck is being tested on the road as I write this.
In the long run, automation is probably going to take the driver out of both the truck cab and the train cab. It is a threat to RR's since the driver is by far the biggest cost involved in operating a commercial truck.
In the short run, we see the effects of the "baby bust", and the baby boom retirement wave. It's the real reason that unemployment is down, but wages have not been going up. More people are retiring every day that are coming into the workforces. The people who are retiring have generally been making higher incomes (due to more age based experience and education, resulting in higher productivity as we "mature"), and the people coming into the workforce are making much less (less experience, less education, and thus lower productivity). This has been reflected in both low productivity growth and low wage growth that we see in the real economy.
Over the long run automation is also displacing higher paying manufacturing jobs with many fewer, but ironically, often higher paying jobs, programming and maintaining the machines that have replaced those that were once "assembly line" workers. Which is the number one reason that manufacturing jobs have been declining and/or virtually stagnant for nearly 40 years, well before any impacts of NAFTA or trade with the rest of the world. This automation trend goes as far back as the late seventies in many industries, and all of the super growth factors like modern electronics, is virtually completely automated, in almost all component manufacture.
Automation is coming to trucks, trains, cab drivers, bus drivers, couriers, and, the like. Over the next 20 years this will almost certainly cause the loss of a whole lot of decent paying moderately skilled work driving things or people around. This will continue to put downward pressure on the wages, particularly on the wages of those with more limited training and experience skillsets, that are competing with each other in a "growing" lower working class.
So while there is a "shortage" of truck drivers, you'd better take advantage, and salt some money away, and start learning how to program these machines..... It's not pretty, but like the buggy whip makers found out, it is probably going to happen.
In the long run, automation is probably going to take the driver out of both the truck cab and the train cab. It is a threat to RR's since the driver is by far the biggest cost involved in operating a commercial truck.
In the short run, we see the effects of the "baby bust", and the baby boom retirement wave. It's the real reason that unemployment is down, but wages have not been going up. More people are retiring every day that are coming into the workforces. The people who are retiring have generally been making higher incomes (due to more age based experience and education, resulting in higher productivity as we "mature"), and the people coming into the workforce are making much less (less experience, less education, and thus lower productivity). This has been reflected in both low productivity growth and low wage growth that we see in the real economy.
Over the long run automation is also displacing higher paying manufacturing jobs with many fewer, but ironically, often higher paying jobs, programming and maintaining the machines that have replaced those that were once "assembly line" workers. Which is the number one reason that manufacturing jobs have been declining and/or virtually stagnant for nearly 40 years, well before any impacts of NAFTA or trade with the rest of the world. This automation trend goes as far back as the late seventies in many industries, and all of the super growth factors like modern electronics, is virtually completely automated, in almost all component manufacture.
Automation is coming to trucks, trains, cab drivers, bus drivers, couriers, and, the like. Over the next 20 years this will almost certainly cause the loss of a whole lot of decent paying moderately skilled work driving things or people around. This will continue to put downward pressure on the wages, particularly on the wages of those with more limited training and experience skillsets, that are competing with each other in a "growing" lower working class.
So while there is a "shortage" of truck drivers, you'd better take advantage, and salt some money away, and start learning how to program these machines..... It's not pretty, but like the buggy whip makers found out, it is probably going to happen.
