An Uber for the trucking industry?

Walter Russell Meade writes at The American Interest about how technology is changing the trucking industry.

The wave of creative destruction unleashed by twenty-first century information technology has left no industry untouched. The latest beneficiary—or victim, depending on your perspective—is the trucking industry. The Wall Street Journal reports on a handful of Silicon Valley backed startups looking to cut costs in the industry by reducing the need for intermediaries between truckers and customers.

...Teamsters and the big trucking companies will likely try to use their political clout to stop change in its tracks, and will cite everything from safety to fairness—as taxi medallion fleets have done against Uber, as teacher unions have done against charter schools, and so on. There will be some truth to some of these claims—no changes come without a cost. But what will really be driving their ire isn’t the general good of the public, but the mortal threat to the business models on which they depend. There is nothing wrong with that moral point of view — it’s only natural that people who are heavily invested in one way of doing business should organize to protect their way of life. In a democracy, citizens have every right to do this.

...Of course, the new trucking economy—if in fact Silicon Valley succeeds in making one—won’t be the end of the story. Next up: self driving trucks…

Read more here.