3.5 million truck drivers... isn't that roughly 1% of the population?
That's according to estimates by the American Trucking Association. Seems outlandish until you see that there even the BLS says there's 1.8 million jobs in trucking. Some of those are going to be part timers and else, which is probably with some lobbyist fudging how you're getting to the 3.5 million mark. Either way, even if it's only .5 percent of the population, it's a ton of jobs.
The ATA used to say the number was 3.5 million, without explanation. Now it says 3 million drivers as of 2010. I think they are just reporting the number of people who hold Commercial Driver's Licenses. The map in the article is animated in the NPR source, where they asked "What's with all the truck drivers?" Also: "Employment of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2014 to 2024, about as fast as the average of all occupations." Hmm.
the BLS says there's 1.8 million jobs in trucking
What started me looking into this was a conversation that a friend of mine had. His father works in a trucking company and they have stopped hiring new drivers because they anticipate self-driving trucks to be on the road a lot sooner than that. For the time being, there's going to be a human providing oversight in the seat, but considering that a truck could effectively run 24/7/365 without a normal driver's salary you can see how appealing that would be to a business to be a first-mover on.
I imagine there will be significant savings in insurance and accident costs as well. Next innovation: road trains.
The more I've been thinking about it too... There may be 350 million people in the US, but not that many are in the workforce... So when you put 2-3 million people against the working population (which I'm too lazy to look up on my phone at the moment) that's probably a sizable chunk.
According to the BLS that number is 251.747 million as of November 2015. Using the 1.8 million number you're looking at 0.715% of the labor force being in trucking.