Posted on 05/19/2015 7:56:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In just a few years, communities that depend on the trucking industry for their vitality will be facing major economic disruption.
Roscoe, Nebraska, is a good place to contemplate how the evolution of long-haul travel can change a community. This unincorporated settlement—some classify Roscoe as a “semi-ghost town”—sits about seven miles east of the city of Ogallala along U.S. 30, which follows the old Lincoln Highway route and before that, various overland migration trails to California, Oregon and Utah.
Just off U.S. 30, opposite the Union Pacific freight-rail tracks, there’s an abandoned gas station with its former pump, pictured above, standing as a relic from a different era of travel when overland motorists crossed this sparsely populated area of western Nebraska on the Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first transcontinental highway.
That was before Interstate 80 was constructed following a parallel route a few miles to the south. And that highway, like so many other Interstate highways, allowed cross-country traffic—including truck drivers hauling freight—to bypass the smaller towns and medium-size cities that spring up along the older routes.
Today, at the local exit leading from I-80 to Roscoe, there are no traveler services. There’s a rest area a few miles down the road and plenty more traveler services clustered nearby at the exit for Ogallala, which includes outposts for TravelCenters of America and Sapp Bros. Travel Centers, plus Denny’s, a Holiday Inn Express and Days Inn.
While autonomous vehicle technology has raised big questions about the future of mobility in urban areas, the long-term impact of driverless innovation on small-town economies supported by the trucking industry is perhaps less understood.
But it’s safe to say that the future industry disruption that driverless semi-trucks hauling freight will bring is poised to cause some serious pain for local communities that depend on human truck drivers.
In a recent Medium post, Scott Santens, a New Orleans-based writer-blogger who focuses on the intersection of poverty, inequality and technological advancement, writes about the looming “one-two punch to America’s gut” that will come from driverless trucks:
We are facing the decimation of entire small town economies, a disruption the likes of which we haven’t seen since the construction of the interstate highway system itself bypassed entire towns.
Santens continues:
Those working in these restaurants and motels along truck-driving routes are also consumers within their own local economies. Think about what a server spends her paycheck and tips on in her own community, and what a motel maid spends from her earnings into the same community. That spending creates other paychecks in turn. So now we’re not only talking about millions more who depend on those who depend on truck drivers, but we’re also talking about entire small town communities full of people who depend on all of the above in more rural areas. With any amount of reduced consumer spending, these local economies will shrink.
What could that mean for a state like Nebraska?
According to the Nebraska Trucking Association, the trucking industry employs one out of every 12 workers in the state, roughly 63,000 jobs. Trucks carry 76 percent of manufactured tonnage in the state. And more than 48 percent of Nebraska communities rely on trucks to move their goods.
Driverless trucks will still need to refuel on their cross-country treks, but advances in technology will, in time, reduce the need to have as many humans involved the trucking industry.
The first driverless truck hit the roads in Nevada this month.
And while there’s still a lot of testing ahead for autonomous driving technology in the trucking industry, Santens writes it’s a question of when, not if, major disruption is coming for communities that depend on trucking. “. . . [We’re] looking at a window of massive disruption starting somewhere between 2020 and 2030,” he writes.
And that could lead to plenty of truck stop settlements across the nation ending up like Roscoe, undermined by big changes in the way we travel and ship goods on America’s highway network.
Certainly a marked decline in truck stop trash going door to door knocking on cabs at 2 a.m. and asking for a “date”... (sorry to be a wise alec)
Lots of out of work Lot Lizards.
Triage for the victims.
“The first driverless truck hit the roads in Nevada this month. “
Not really a driverless car.
We'll see. Once upon a time, typical low-skilled people might work on farms, or work in factories, or perhaps drive trucks. Now, none of those industries look like they need to employ vast numbers of US citizens. The unemployed people are not going to suddenly become systems analysts working in cubicles. And they aren't going to all become entrepreneurs marketing miracle products to emerging nations.
No. A lot of Americans are going to end up sitting at home, thinking, "I have nothing much to offer my society. I am not needed."
It isn't a good thing.
But, hey, who knows? Maybe something else will come along.
I wonder if a driverless truck will be more suseptible to highway robbers? They pull up in front of the truck, the truck obediently slows down to avoid a collision. The robbers force it to a stop by blocking it. Will the truck make a 911 call for help? Will it employ some sort of onboard defense system?
My late father was born in 1925 and lived through the Depression. He told me several times that successful salesmen had money while most people were near starvation. One can learn sales at short seminars, on the Internet or through a sort of apprenticeship. No degree is required in most sales positions.
I suppose they could electrify the chassis or have some sort of non-lethal gas or something.
This is something smaller towns need to be addressing quickly, because yes, the new economy will kill small towns. (And I believe that if we all get herded into big cities, the country itself will die) One thing they can do is bring back some manufacturing to these towns, including value added food production like packaging or bakeries, rather than shipping commodity crops.
Are you forgetting all the massage women along those routes?
With fewer people working, who are these ace salespeople going to sell anything to?
Of course the companies could subcontract out to drone companies to monitor their fleets.
Paul Belien: Mr Dalrymple, you are a well-known analyst of the cultural disease of our society. What do you see as the main problem?
Theodore Dalrymple: The underlying problem is a lack of purpose*, a lack of feeling of belonging to anything larger than one’s own little life. This gives rise to quite a large amount of social pathology.
* italics mine
Robots will stop to fill up on oil and look at older robots with older microprocessors and feel superior.
“marked decline in truck stop trash going door to door knocking on cabs at 2 a.m.”
Trash? Show a little respect, its not like they are politicians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.