140,000 new local jobs … with automated trucks

Ike shows how with an interactive story map

By: Paul Goodman

How will self-driving cars and trucks disrupt our economy and impact jobs? That’s one of the key questions that everyone from start-ups to presidential candidates to fake news outlets are asking about automation.

San Francisco-based Ike is making progress on that question and just open-sourced an economic model demonstrating that their approach to automated trucks could add 140,000 local trucking jobs to the economy by 2030, stemming the potential loss of the 210,000 over the road jobs that could be replaced by automation in that time. From their announcement:

Automated trucks can help shift difficult long haul jobs to short haul roles, keeping drivers closer to home and making use of their skills and expertise where it matters. Dr. Charles Hodgson’s analysis suggests Ike’s approach could create nearly 140,000 new local truck driving jobs by 2030.

Ike used Mapbox to build a fully interactive story map that combines maps, narrative, charts, raw data, and diagrams to illustrate how autonomy will affect trucking jobs.