Walmart Driverless deliveries?

In a world full of hackers and computer glitches, what can possibly go wrong with a driverless delivery truck?

The plaintiff lawyers, some, are saying, nothing can go wrong — let ‘er rip.

I’m thinking, as are some of the plaintiff attorneys, there’s gold in them there driverless hills. Unfortunately, I also think there are some fatal crashes in the mix as well, which is where the plaintiff attorneys will cash in.

For Walmart, with assets valued at approximately $252 billion and still owned for the most part by the Walton Family (now just under 50%), plaintiff attorneys should be of no concern because what’s a million-dollar lawsuit award when you’re worth billions, but the idea of dead people along roadways should be a concern. If you have a heart.

I’m not saying the Waltons don’t care about fatal accidents. After all, one of Sam Walton’s sons, John, died in 2005 after taking off in an experimental ultralight near Jackson, Wyoming. If you haven’t al

If you haven’t already heard the news, Walmart is moving forward with using driverless trucks to make grocery deliveries from its warehouses to its grocery stores.

In the early stages, it placed a safety driver inside the truck, but since nothing went wrong, the retail giant yanked the driver’s rear out of the truck and put him to better use — mopping the floors, whatever.

In a story published Nov. 8 by CNBC, titled “How Walmart will use driverless delivery to boost online sales,” the lead paragraph reads: “Walmart said Monday it has started using fully driverless trucking in its online grocery business, aiming to increase capacity and reduce inefficiencies.”

Come on. Just spell out the real truth.

The bottom line is: the driverless move is being made so Walmart can make even more money by eliminating its drivers. I mean, its CEO is only pulling in $22 million a year including stock options. Who can live on that?

Walmart’s top six executives take home approximately $80 million while its employees, many of them, only make $11 an hour, and only on a part-time basis. (Who needs benefits?)

It’s the same model big-box stores are using with cashiers. Get rid of the humans who used to operate the cash registers and replace them with those stupid (how I hate them) self-checkout machines. If I use one, do I get a discount for doing the scanning and bagging myself?

Ha, ha, funny guy. Heck no.

The grocery and retail stores make more by cutting jobs, while raking in more dough. Ah, the capitalist system.

If you Google “Walmart’s Made in the USA claim,” you will find many stories about how the company manufactures the vast majority of its products overseas while still touting the “Made in America” slogan, or “Buy American” campaign. Walmart, in those same stories, disputes the damaging claims being made against it, but if you read through the data, the stories, how Walmart lobbied to ease trade restrictions by cozying up to politicians always on the lookout for an easy buck, like a whore looking for a “john,” it will raise eyebrows as to how committed the company is to American workers to whom it wants to sell products.

There is little doubt, though, at least in my opinion, that Walmart manufacturing, its low-ball purchasing practices have proven more of a boom to communist China than it has to the U.S., which lost seven million manufacturing jobs between 1980 and 2011. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Let ‘em eat cake?

In that CNBC story, Walmart said the use of automated vehicles will also allow store associates more freedom to perform “higher level” tasks, including picking and packing online orders and customer assistance.

If those picking-and-packing jobs are considered “higher level tasks” compared to driving a truck, the Walton family clearly has little time on the road.

Please, H-E-B, keep your truck drivers employed. If you do, I might keep shopping with you.