AI exposure: Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators
Operate industrial trucks or tractors equipped to move materials around a warehouse, storage yard, factory, construction site, or similar location.
Reading this score
computedIndustrial Truck and Tractor Operators is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 4.1% of weighted task load, rank 888 of 923. 92.8% of this job is work current AI systems cannot produce at all. That is not a statement about skill or value. It is a statement about what these systems can and cannot do.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 9 tasks it averages 3.00 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Operate or tend automatic stacking, loading, packaging, or cutting machines, at 18.3%. The least is Perform routine maintenance on vehicles or auxiliary equipment, at 0.0%. A gap of 18.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within transportation and material moving occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 24.3% across the group's 52 roles, with 51 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 9 tasks, 0 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 9 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.39 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 3.00 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.39 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.56 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.78 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.11 | 0-3 |
Task by task
9 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operate or tend automatic stacking, loading, packaging, or cutting machines. | 18.3% | 6.7% | 75.0% | 4.06 | untouched |
| Move controls to drive gasoline- or electric-powered trucks, cars, or tractors and transport materials between loading, processing, and storage areas. | 11.7% | 13.3% | 75.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Turn valves and open chutes to dump, spray, or release materials from dump cars or storage bins into hoppers. | 11.7% | 13.3% | 75.0% | 3.59 | untouched |
| Inspect product load for accuracy and safely move it around the warehouse or facility to ensure timely and complete delivery. | 8.3% | 4.2% | 87.5% | 4.34 | untouched |
| Move levers or controls that operate lifting devices, such as forklifts, lift beams with swivel-hooks, hoists, or elevating platforms, to load, unload, transport, or stack material. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.61 | untouched |
| Manually or mechanically load or unload materials from pallets, skids, platforms, cars, lifting devices, or other transport vehicles. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.51 | untouched |
| Position lifting devices under, over, or around loaded pallets, skids, or boxes and secure material or products for transport to designated areas. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.49 | untouched |
| Weigh materials or products and record weight or other production data on tags or labels. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.26 | untouched |
| Perform routine maintenance on vehicles or auxiliary equipment, such as cleaning, lubricating, recharging batteries, fueling, or replacing liquefied-gas tank. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.11 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.