Some 5.7 million Americans are licensed as professional drivers, steering the country’s vast fleets of delivery vans, UPS trucks and tractor-trailers. Over the next two decades, the driving will slowly be taken on by the machines themselves. Drones. Robots. Autonomous trucks. It’s already happening in a barren stretch in Australia, where Caterpillar Inc. will have 45 self-directed, 240-ton mining trucks maneuvering at an iron-ore mine.

Most of the hubbub around autonomous technology has focused on passenger vehicles, notably Google’s promotional wonder, the Google Car. Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford Jr. says self-driving cars will hit roads by 2025. But commercial uses are where the real money and action lie: rewiring a massive part of the U.S. economy while removing tens of billions in costs from a commercial fleet that today numbers 253 million trucks.

A fleet of “smart trucks” can reduce staffing needs at a typical iron mine by 30 to 40 percent, according to a recent study from the University of Queensland. Lots of previous Dish on self-driving vehicles here.