It is too easy to think that merely making something futuristic will usher in the future. Case in point: Even tech analysts are guilty of assuming that driverless trucking will decimate the industry in just a few years. But innovation trickles down slowly when you’re talking about massively expensive items such as trucks, which cost around $150,000 and last 30 years. For proof, just look at how many electric cars grace our highways: around 500,000 total. Ford sells a million F-series trucks every year.

“The first fully autonomous trucks will be here earlier than anyone expects, and the last will be here much later,” says Alex Rodrigues, the 22-year-old founder of Embark, a driverless trucking startup with the novel idea of partnering with the trucking industry rather than rolling over it. Embark has created a unique model for trucking–one that Rodrigues says will actually create more trucking jobs (at least in the short run). The company’s theory that a robot-human partnership can work started being put to the test last month, when an Embark truck began to deliver shipments on behalf of Frigidaire.

Embark’s retrofitted 18-wheelers can already drive themselves while on interstate highways. Where it gets tricky is near cities, which are still too complex for driverless trucks to navigate. To compensate, Embark operates hand-off depots, where a skilled human takes over for the last few miles of driving. Currently, the highway portion of the trip, where the truck drives itself, is overseen by a team of two drivers who switch off regularly so they can stay alert while monitoring the system, and an engineer; the expectation is that eventually those drivers won’t be needed at all.

“I think they’re on to something,” says Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream. Viscelli points out that such a model could increase fuel efficiency, because long-haul and short-haul trucks require different technologies to run clean. Yet another impact of Embark’s model might be to provide new work to drivers who have already quit long-haul trucking because of the demanding lifestyle.

Eagle-eyed readers might be thinking: If those highway drivers eventually won’t be needed, why does Embark think it’ll grow the number of trucking jobs? The simple reason is that there is a labor shortfall already constraining the long-haul trucking industry.

In a previous era, long-haul trucking was a reliable, high-paying job in many regions hit by declining manufacturing jobs. But increasing numbers of people have moved to cities, and attitudes toward work-travel have changed. “There’s a job shortage in long-haul because younger generations just don’t want to be away,” says Embark’s Rodrigues. The pay is low and the romance of the open road quickly gives way to loneliness. That’s shown in the industry’s astounding levels of yearly turnover, which often reach 300%. Some analysts have estimated that there’s already a 50,000-person annual shortfall in the long-distance trucking industry, which comprises about 800,000 jobs. By 2027, that number has been projected to grow as high as 175,000.

This shift is already reshaping the industry: Work is under way to deepen seaports on the east coast because of a bottle-neck in long-haul trucking capacity. The idea is get a shipment within 100 miles of its destination, whereupon a regional driver can take it the rest of the way. Regional truckers are far more easy to hire than long-haul truckers, because they don’t have to spend weeks away from home and can work regular hours.