Autonomous mining vehicles are becoming increasingly common across Australian operations, changing the day-to-day responsibilities of the workers who once drove and operated them.
GlobalData figures show that more than 3,800 autonomous haul trucks were operating across surface mines worldwide by last year, with Australia the second largest contributor after China.
Mining majors including Rio Tinto, BHP and Fortescue are among those deploying smart trucks capable of running without direct human intervention.
The implications for the workforce are significant.
Data from the Mining and Automotive Skills Alliance (AUSMASA) projects that the number of truck drivers, along with welders and flame cutters, will fall by more than 10 per cent by 2028.
That trend mirrors a broader shift, with the World Economic Forum estimating that 39 per cent of workers’ core skills will need to change by 2030 as digital and AI adoption accelerates in Australia.
In this environment, mining companies’ competitive advantage will depend not only on how quickly they adopt autonomous systems, but on how well they prepare their people for the roles those systems create.
Haul truck drivers illustrate the trend most clearly.
Haulage suits automation because trucks run repeatable routes in controlled environments, unlike less predictable tasks such as drilling, blasting or maintenance.
In the Pilbara, Rio Tinto’s truck fleet is more than 90 per cent autonomous under its Mine of the Future programme, and BHP’s South Flank site runs a fully automated fleet of 41 Komatsu haul trucks.
Hancock Iron Ore’s Roy Hill mine finished converting its entire 78-truck fleet to driverless operation in late 2025, a project supplier Epiroc calls the world’s largest manufacturer-agnostic autonomous mine.
Truck drivers are increasingly moving into roles such as remote operations specialists and fleet controllers, with front-line work becoming less physically demanding but more cognitively complex.
Sharon Parker, who studies the impact of technology on work at the Future of Work Institute, states the change is mostly about evolving responsibilities rather than job losses.
“Rather than whole jobs being eradicated, the main thing that is happening is that people’s roles are changing,” she said.
Parker describes this as a shift from blue-collar work toward “grey collar” roles that blend operational experience with digital skills.
Several companies have invested heavily in redeployment. BHP’s FutureFit Academy has put around $300m into two training centres offering paid, nationally recognised qualifications, both to retrain staff and widen the talent pool.
At Newmont’s Boddington mine, many former drivers and drill operators now supervise equipment remotely, though some employees chose to leave rather than retrain.
The push comes as mining engineering enrolments have dropped more than 60 per cent over the past decade, even as demand grows for workers who can manage complex automated systems.
Epiroc’s Lakshmi Anitha says building confidence matters as much as technical training, and argues effective preparation means investing in people early.
“The most important step is to start investing in people before the technology arrives and goes live,” she said.
Researchers argue traditional education alone will not close the gap, pointing to micro-credentials and closer ties between industry and training providers as the way forward.
Parker also warns that oversight roles carry their own risks, since workers monitoring automated systems can become complacent or overly reliant on them.
Even so, optimism persists, as Li Binghao of the University of New South Wales expects fully autonomous mines to spread across open pit operations, while underground sites stay semi-autonomous for now.
He frames the shift as one of relocation rather than replacement.
“The future is not about removing people from mining but about relocating them from hazardous environments and transitioning them into higher-value roles,” he said.
The industry has already proven that autonomous haulage boosts productivity and safety; the next test is whether it can roll out the technology without leaving its workforce behind.
