Say goodbye to the delivery guy! Half of all delivery jobs to be phased out

Mercedes and Starship Technologies have developed a system that doubles delivery productivity for half the cost.

Say goodbye to the delivery guy! His job is about to be phased out, with the first phase to begin immediately. Advances in drone technology and delivery methods will cut in half the number of delivery drivers needed in the next several years.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - They call it the last mile, and it is the most expensive. The last trip a package makes between the receiving facility and your door is the most costly. A human driver must make well over a hundred stops and gos, usually around 180 per eight-hour shift. Each stop requires the driver to exit the vehicle, locate a package, tote it to a door, wait for the homeowner, and make the delivery.

The process is tedious and time consuming and above all, expensive. Finally, a solution has arrived, to the detriment of the drivers, whose jobs are about to evaporate.

Mercedes has developed a "mothership," which is a delivery van stocked with drones. Each drone carries a package. The mothership simply has to park in the neighborhood and open its doors, and the robot delivery vehicles do the rest.

The robot delivery vehicles are made by Starship Technologies for package deliveries. The vehicles have already been put into service via pilot programs and are working well.

The robots return to the mothership after making their deliveries.

A human will still drive the van, but much of the stop and go will be ended. It will save gas and reduce CO2 emissions. It will also allow double the present number of packages to be delivered within the same time without adding any personnel.

Half of the drivers that currently work will no longer be needed in the years to come.

It is uncertain when the technology will be globally available. That will depend more on manufacturing more than anything, and how quickly the delivery robots can be produced and put into service. There is certainly demand, and adoption between carries will be quick and fierce.

This development is part of a coming trend to replace workers with machines. The movement is being called a "fourth industrial revolution" and many companies are preparing for the shift to much greater automation.

The changes on the horizon don't just threaten wage workers either, but many white color workers are also in danger of losing their livelihood.

The greatest problem with the coming revolution is what makes it different from anything that has happened before. Previous revolutions created new sectors for employment. For example, the steam engine also gave rise to the railroad which employed those who were displaced from factories and mills. This time however, many new systems will be self-maintaining, more easily maintained, or disposable. Robots will be able to perform maintenance on other robots.

Analysts expect the number of available jobs will begin to decline and never recover. Eventually, futurists imagine billions of people without jobs or any other productive function other than to consume resources and reproduce.

What we decide to do with people who cannot work, no matter how much they want to, is a massive social question that will emerge from the fourth industrial revolution.

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