Will Congress Keep on Trucking?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The United States is undergoing a highly reported crisis in its trucking industry. As a column in the Hill reported last year, 75 percent of the nation’s freight is moved by trucks, yet “trucking companies struggle to recruit younger drivers, who leave at unprecedented rates, with turnover reportedly exceeding 90 percent at the largest carriers. Trucking industry demographics reveal the root of the current and worsening crisis, with an expected shortfall of 160,000 drivers by 2030.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the number of immigrant truck drivers is not helping matters, given that on the West Coast more than 35 percent of drivers are Sikhs. (There’s a reason that truck stops, typically places that dispensed barely edible gruel, have become the site of some fairly good Indian restaurants.) It’s all adding up to potential economic problems as Americans are more reliant than ever on freight deliveries.

One of the obvious solutions aligns with the growth in artificial intelligence. Autonomous vehicles are developing quickly. We’ve seen the expansion of self-driving taxis in major American cities such as San Francisco. Despite some high-profile incidents, they nevertheless offer impressive safety statistics. Robots are, as I’ve reported previously for The American Spectator, far better drivers than human beings. Labor unions see the writing on the wall and are stepping up their efforts to quash the expansion of AV systems to the trucking industry.

For instance, legislation is popping up in many states that would require human operators on automated trucks, which defeats the entire purpose of the technology. Using AVs for interstate trucking obviously needs to be rolled out with a variety of safeguards, but we know what these laws are about: job protections. If history is a guide, the new technologies will eventually win out, but government can gum up the works for a long time and boost the cost of adoption.

Government is a slow-moving vehicle. In 2017, lawmakers introduced the SELF DRIVE Act, which would give the federal government the ultimate responsibility for regulating AVs. Although I support federalism, which provides the states with the authority to handle most governmental tasks, I find it most sensible for the feds to regulate trucking and other interstate commerce matters. It’s nearly impossible to develop a new technology when the developers are pulled in various directions by inconsistent state policymaking.

That was nine years ago, but now Congress is considering the latest iteration of that bill, which has passed through a key committee. As the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association opines, the legislation “prioritizes safety through rigorous oversight while clearing the path for American companies to lead globally. This bill creates what autonomous vehicle leaders need: clear rules, strong safety standards, and the regulatory certainty needed to scale deployment nationwide.” Basically, it empowers the U.S. Department of Transportation to set industry standards and streamlines antiquated federal rules.

Consider a recent article from Politico: “For years, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has swatted down union-backed efforts to shield trucking jobs from automation. Now, politically powerful union leaders are pushing his would-be successors to change course, a move that could pump the brakes in California on an industry that’s starting to accelerate elsewhere.”

These technologies take years to develop, but all it takes to put the brakes on AV advancement is for the politics to shift — something of particular importance in California. Due to our state’s size, a new governor here could effectively set de facto national policy. That’s true not just for transportation and technology, but for every sort of regulation.

I prefer if companies spend their time and money enhancing their technologies rather than lobbying the state Legislature. Strange as it sounds, but California hasn’t been that bad on this front. It last year passed rules that “would broaden how autonomous vehicles, including medium- and heavy-duty models, operate on state roads,” per the industry magazine Transport Topics. California regulators even expanded territories for robotaxis last year.

As Bernd Held reported for Axios in 2018, e-commerce’s rapid growth has put “pressure on the U.S. trucking industry.” But autonomous vehicles “could offer one major advantage over current options: greater flexibility. They could cut costs associated with drivers and operate with higher fuel efficiency and less maintenance due to optimized driving patterns.” They could operate mostly at night, reduce safety concerns, and, as the author noted, solve the truck-driver shortage.

As with all things technology related, the reality might not live up to the hype. But there’s no reason not to see where this takes us, and to unleash a technology that could seamlessly pick up the slack as human drivers retire or seek out other careers. The question as always: Will the government get out of the way and let the industry develop? Counterintuitive as it sounds, a federal approach will almost certainly be better than a state one in achieving that desired result.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute.

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.