I generally love your material but this is off the mark.

Yes, self-driving trucks are a long way away — at least a decade but probably much more than that. It’s an extremely hard problem to get right. Conceivably our technological society might collapse before we solve it, because it’s creaking…

But I don’t think you’re thinking about the Collapse, so let’s assume that technology continues to improve and we get self-driving trucks.

Once we have self-driving trucks, why would any other kind be made? Why would the short hauls less than 50 miles be somehow immune? Owners can still replace a full-time worker with nothing at all, whether they’re a short- or long-haul trucker. Why would they need to keep people to do the paperwork, considering that a fleet of self-driving trucks can capture and report all the data automatically?

More, self-driving trucks would do a better job, particularly if they were communicating with other cars on the road in real-time — which would mean the truck would only ever have to hit the brakes in emergencies. They could be reporting the state of their engines and other key components in real time to a central depot, get maintenance exactly when they needed it.

It will take a long time to happen, but when it happens, all those professional driver jobs will go and be replaced by nothing. And a good thing too, assuming we have a universal basic income, because those are nasty jobs.