{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/transportation-storage-and-distribution-managers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers",
    "soc_code": "11-3071",
    "category": "Management",
    "us_employment": 221180,
    "median_annual_wage": 107230
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 53,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 11,
    "embodiment": 12,
    "liability_shield": 7,
    "trust_premium": 9,
    "judgment_accountability": 14
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Load planning, carrier rate shopping, dock appointment scheduling and daily throughput reporting are already native features of any modern TMS/WMS, which is why this sits at 11 rather than 15 — but the residue is real work: physically walking the dock to see why the outbound trailer is short-loaded, reassigning drivers when two call out at 5am, and standing in a rate call where the carrier knows your freight is already on their truck.",
    "embodiment": "You are on the warehouse floor and in the yard for a large share of the shift — walking the pick modules, climbing onto a trailer to inspect a shifted load, checking a reefer setpoint, doing yard checks and forklift-incident walkthroughs — which is more than the 5-8 of a supervisor who occasionally leaves the desk, but not the 15+ of the technician who actually repairs the conveyor drive you called out.",
    "liability_shield": "No licence gates entry to this role, but you are the named responsible party on the DOT side — hours-of-service and driver qualification files, CDL and drug-testing compliance, hazmat placarding under 49 CFR, OSHA 1910.178 powered-truck certification — and FMCSA audits land on your desk, which is what lifts a no-credential job to 7.",
    "trust_premium": "Your carrier reps, 3PL account managers and the two drivers who will actually run a Sunday recovery load do business with you personally rather than with the org chart, and that book of favors gets you capacity in a tight market — but freight is transactional, contracts get rebid on rate, and a replacement manager inherits the lanes within a quarter, which caps this at 9.",
    "judgment_accountability": "When a trailer is short a driver, the customer's line will stop in six hours, and expediting costs eight times the contract rate, you make that call alone in minutes with no procedure covering it — likewise deciding whether a driver is fit to run, whether to hold a suspect lot, or whether to shut a dock door after a near-miss, and those decisions are what a post-incident investigation reads back to you."
  },
  "rationale": "The analytical core of this job — route and load optimization, carrier rate comparison, inventory and throughput reporting, dock scheduling, KPI dashboards — is exactly what TMS/WMS software plus AI already does better and faster than a human with a spreadsheet. What survives is the floor: standing in the warehouse when the conveyor jams, handling a driver shortage at 5am, negotiating with a carrier rep who is holding your freight, and owning DOT/OSHA compliance when an audit or an injury lands. The modal worker here is a warehouse or fleet operations manager at a distribution center, not a corporate supply-chain strategist, and their day is roughly half screen work that is automating and half physical crisis management that isn't.",
  "outlook": "Headcount thins as one manager plus optimization software covers what two or three used to, and the surviving roles skew toward site-level people management, compliance ownership, and vendor negotiation rather than planning.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "FMCSA safety-management rules already require a named human for carrier safety compliance (DOT designated Safety Management/officer, drug-and-alcohol program administrator, hazmat security plan signatory). If FMCSA's ongoing Safety Fitness Determination rulemaking, or a state OSHA warehouse-quota standard (California AB 701, New York's Warehouse Worker Protection Act, Washington HB 1762) is extended to require a named accountable site manager to certify quota/injury-rate compliance and expose that individual to citation, the personal-liability floor rises materially.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If AI takes the routing/scheduling tier, what is left is the call nobody wants to log: embargo a lane, refuse a load, shut a dock, pull a driver off duty. Insurers and post-crash litigation already ask who authorized dispatch of a fatigued driver or a nonconforming load — nuclear-verdict negligent-entrustment suits name the operations manager. Wider adoption of insurer conditions requiring documented human authorization for exception dispatch raises this.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: once TMS/WMS optimization, rate shopping and KPI reporting are fully automated, the residual role is exception handling, cross-carrier escalation, labor crises and audit defense — none of which are clean data tasks. Task_resistance rises as measured against the shrunken remaining job, not because AI got worse.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route: buyers purchase freight capacity and fill rate, not a named human manager, and no shipper procurement process prices human oversight of a DC. Realistic ceiling is around low-to-mid 60s, driven almost entirely by DOT/OSHA personal liability and exception-decision accountability, not by any market preference for a human."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 118680,
        "wage": 92460
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 124810,
        "wage": 94730
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 132040,
        "wage": 94560
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 132210,
        "wage": 96390
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 144640,
        "wage": 98230
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 169910,
        "wage": 98560
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 198780,
        "wage": 99200
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 213000,
        "wage": 102010
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 221180,
        "wage": 107230
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 86.4,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [
    {
      "slug": "chief-executives",
      "title": "Chief Executives",
      "verdict": "SAFE",
      "risk_resistance": 69,
      "median_wage": 213990,
      "overlap": 78,
      "skills_to_close": [
        "Science",
        "Operations Analysis",
        "Management of Financial Resources",
        "Judgment and Decision Making"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}