Job Check
Tank Car, Truck, and Ship Loaders
Load and unload chemicals and bulk solids, such as coal, sand, and grain, into or from tank cars, trucks, or ships, using material moving equipment. May perform a variety of other tasks relating to shipment of products. May gauge or sample shipping tanks and test them for leaks.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Seal outlet valves on tank cars, barges, and trucks.Mostly human for now
- 02Verify tank car, barge, or truck load numbers to ensure car placement accuracy based on written or verbal instructions.Mostly human for now
- 03Start pumps and adjust valves or cables to regulate the flow of products to vessels, using knowledge of loading procedures.Mostly human for now
- 04Check conditions and weights of vessels to ensure cleanliness and compliance with loading procedures.Mostly human for now
- 05Observe positions of cars passing loading spouts, and swing spouts into the correct positions at the appropriate times.Mostly human for now
- 06Monitor product movement to and from storage tanks, coordinating activities with other workers to ensure constant product flow.Mostly human for now
- 07Operate ship loading and unloading equipment, conveyors, hoists, and other specialized material handling equipment such as railroad tank car unloading equipment.Mostly human for now
- 08Record operating data such as products and quantities pumped, gauge readings, and operating times, manually or using computers.AI could speed this up a lot
- 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.Mostly human for now
- 10Connect ground cables to carry off static electricity when unloading tanker cars.Mostly human for now
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
7%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 23% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 92% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Seal outlet valves on tank cars, barges, and trucks.
- Verify tank car, barge, or truck load numbers to ensure car placement accuracy based on written or verbal instructions.
- Connect ground cables to carry off static electricity when unloading tanker cars.