Ready to feel old? You probably remember when presidential candidate Joe Biden made headlines by saying truckers won’t have jobs in five years—thanks to self-driving vehicles. Well, he said that six years ago.

Here’s President Biden’s full quote. “Every trucker out there with an eighth-grade education or a high school education knows they’re likely not to have a job in the next three, four, five years.”

His point was simple, and it may still be valid. “To address that, you gotta provide alternatives.”

What Biden was actually talking about

The video actually made the rounds again in 2025. Some commenters thought it was AI. But the fact-checkers at Snopes insist it is genuine.

Other commenters felt candidate Joe Biden was being antagonistic toward truck drivers. But the quote was part of a long story about an old-time friend who was retired and the man’s son, who Biden reported was “worried.” Worried by his changing industry.

Biden went on to say, “This is the hard part, you gotta go and say ‘but there are a lot of jobs out there, but you’re gonna have to go back and retrain.’”

Self-driving was all the buzz in 2019

Biden may have seen the Tesla semi truck prototype and heard promises from business leaders such as Elon Musk promising shareholders self-driving trucks were mere months away. The irony is Biden said these words in 2019 and they didn’t age well. He gave the industry five years at most, but the American Trucking Association estimates there are still 3.5 million U.S. truck drivers in 2025.

The truth is that engineering vehicles that drive themselves is proving very hard. Even though Tesla has deployed self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas, it’s currently paying a human babysitter to sit behind the wheel of each one. A safety feature well worth the cost. More recently, the CEO of Lyft admitted there’s “zero likelihood” self-driving cars will replace the company’s human drivers in any reasonable timeframe.

Our truck drivers have proven they’re willing to work even longer hours for lower relative pay than previous generations. And self-driving technology has yet to prove itself safe. Truck driving may not be a wise 50-year career. But the young man Biden was discussing in 2019 may well still have his truck driving job today.