Will AI replace Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders?

What this score means

Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders is among the least exposed roles in Transportation. Most of what the job involves still sits outside what current AI can do, even as the tools around it keep changing. At 13 out of 100 it scores 5 points below the Transportation average of 18. Across the 3 sources behind this baseline, individual estimates run from 5 to 20, so the score is a weighted consensus rather than any single figure.

The number is a consensus estimate for the typical version of the role, built from published academic and industry research scored occupation by occupation. It is not a prediction about any individual. How scoring works

What this job actually involves

Exposure follows the work itself rather than the job title, so it is worth seeing what the role is made of. These are the tasks O*NET records for Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders, most central first, showing 12 of 19.

• 01Seal outlet valves on tank cars, barges, and trucks.
• 02Verify tank car, barge, or truck load numbers to ensure car placement accuracy based on written or verbal instructions.
• 03Start pumps and adjust valves or cables to regulate the flow of products to vessels, using knowledge of loading procedures.
• 04Check conditions and weights of vessels to ensure cleanliness and compliance with loading procedures.
• 05Observe positions of cars passing loading spouts, and swing spouts into the correct positions at the appropriate times.
• 06Monitor product movement to and from storage tanks, coordinating activities with other workers to ensure constant product flow.
• 07Operate ship loading and unloading equipment, conveyors, hoists, and other specialized material handling equipment such as railroad tank car unloading equipment.
• 08Record operating data such as products and quantities pumped, gauge readings, and operating times, manually or using computers.
• 09Operate industrial trucks, tractors, loaders, and other equipment to transport materials to and from transportation vehicles and loading docks, and to store and retrieve materials in warehouses.
• 10Connect ground cables to carry off static electricity when unloading tanker cars.
• 11Copy and attach load specifications to loaded tanks.
• 12Remove and replace tank car dome caps, or direct other workers in their removal and replacement.

Task statements from O*NET by the National Center for O*NET Development, used under CC BY 4.0. The tasks are descriptive; the exposure score above is ours.

The research behind this score

This baseline aggregates 3 research sources that scored Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders for AI and automation exposure. More recent, higher confidence studies carry more weight in the final number.

• 01Anthropic Economic Index 2026 - AI Task Exposure · 2026
• 02GPTs are GPTs: Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs · 2024
• 03AI Occupational Exposure to Language Modeling · 2023

Also covers

Barge Loader · Barges Loader · Bulk Tank Car Unloader · Car Loader · Car Unloader · Caustics Loader · Coal Dumping Equipment Operator · Dock Loader and related titles

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