Review: The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream, by Steve Viscelli

Without stretching the metaphor far, trucking is the lifeblood of most contemporary economies. In 2017 there was almost 17 million tons of freight shipped in the United States. Trucking accounted for over half, pumping $66.5 billion worth of products and raw materials to every corner of the country, from Manhattan, New York to Manhattan, Montana (see Figure 1). Without trucking there is no Amazon or Apple, no Target or Walmart, no Coca-Cola or McDonald's. If trucking is so indispensable, then, why aren’t truckers valued?

Figure 1. Trucks (yellow) haul much more freightage than other modes of transportation in the United States

Focusing specifically on the long-haul, full “truckload” segment of the industry, Viscelli’s The Big Rig (UC Press) tells the story of how one of the most successfully unionized jobs became one of the most precarious. For almost three decades after World War II, into the late 1970s, trucking was a respected blue-collar occupation with high wages and stable profit margins in the United States. During this time, the labor market was controlled by one of the most storied unions of the 20th century, the Teamsters. Then, on the heels of rising fuel prices and stagflation in the 1970s, deregulation transformed the industry. Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 into law believing that it would reduce the costs for consumers, "because almost every product we purchase has been shipped by truck, and outmoded regulations have inflated the prices that each one of us must pay." 

While, as a result of deregulation, "[l]arge companies now pay much less for goods… deregulation also brought lower wages, greater amounts of unpaid work, and less-desirable working conditions for truckers" (p. 39). The Big Rig, however, goes beyond this story and demonstrates how employers get people to accept these jobs anyway. Despite bad working conditions, and a successful history with unionizing, the industry today is not at risk of workers organizing: no one talks about unions. “Instead,” Viscelli writes, “many talked about the possibility of becoming an owner-operator, or self-employed trucker who owns their own truck” (p. 20). In reviewing previous literature, Viscelli found that nearly everyone assumed owner-operators enjoyed more control. But, he soon found that owner-operators worked as contractors for trucking companies and could not easily be distinguished from the employees. In this context, Viscelli's main puzzle emerges: For laborers, working as an employee entailed low wages and low control over scheduling and work conditions. But, if contracting solved these problems, as many truckers were led to believe, why wasn't everyone a contractor?

For trucking companies, contracting was a survival strategy in the hyper-competitive early years of deregulation, providing a larger pool of cheap, flexible labor while shifting most of the risk onto the truckers. With contractors, carriers don't have to pay a range of costs associated with employees (health, retirement, Social Security, or Medicare); contractors paid for their own fuel, maintenance, and insurance; and contractors are less likely to unionize. Finally, because contractors are financially precarious and there are perceived costs associated with switching firms, they are likely to take any job the carrier offers and on the carrier's terms. Otherwise, they will have an expensive piece of depreciating machinery generating no revenue, while still responsible for fixed costs. 

Despite carriers' desire to use contractors, the early years of deregulation struggled with two problems: (1) keeping a steady supply of owner-operators and (2) carriers found contractors “unwilling or unable to submit to the dispatching requirements and maintenance schedules required by those firms” (p. 31). These were two problems carriers needed to solve. Here, the story of The Big Rig goes beyond how deregulation and declining unionization tipped the scales against truckers. It also tells the story of how employers engaged in collective action to increase the supply of contractors while increasing their exploitability.

There is no available data demonstrating that contractors are better off than employees, and, in fact, Viscelli’s data demonstrate the opposite. How is it that carriers keep a steady supply of owner-operators by convincing truckers that contracting is a better life? Although carriers are the primary beneficiaries of contracting, a variety of third-parties alongside the carrier make it so a “contracting discourse” surrounds the employees, making owning one’s own rig the logical step along a successful career. These third-parties actively shape information about increased income and control for owner-operators. Rather than antagonism between the owners of capital and the laborers, trucking companies present contracting as the means to become an owner of capital themselves: business partners. This discourse crafts the potential pitfalls as a function of individual failing: not everyone is cut out to be a contractor, it requires skill and discipline. Therefore, The Big Rig is also, in a sense, a production of culture story, how firms crafted the cultural milieu of drivers such that the contractor was made anew as a small-business owner, “one that saw taking whatever load was offered to them not as companies telling them what to do, but as doing what it takes to meet the needs of their customers and a smart way to run their own business” (p. 127).  

What about after truckers learn, through experience, that contracting is not as profitable or flexible as they believed? Carriers used two strategies two retain contractors, both involving third-parties. First, would-be owner-operators are often cajoled into leasing a tractor until they own it—forming a kind of “debt peonage” (p. 138). Carriers, realizing that leasing relationships would risk drivers being classified as employees (bringing all the requisite costs), work with third-party leasing companies to further distance themselves from the driver. Second, as the could not directly manage the contractors, as again this would mean they were employees, they used third-party companies, like American Trucking Business Services (ATBS), offer “business advice” to the new small business owners (p. 170). These business advisors, however, were often also in business with carriers, who would recommend, subsidize, or even require contractors to use their services. And, as one might expect: “the ‘business skills’ that firms teach contractors has nothing to do with things like maximizing the price they get for their services, and everything to do with being a better worker, having a better attitude toward management, and learning to survive on less income.” In particular, the advice serves to play up  the costs the small business owner would have to shoulder should they decide to switch carriers in search of greater profits and freedom. 

As C. Wright Mills famously wrote, the essence of the sociological imagination is about grasping the intersection of history and biography: when individual issues are seen as social issues. Reading Viscelli’s portrayal of the changes in the trucking industry over the last century, the intersection of my biography and the history of trucking was in full relief — a testament to the lucidity of his writing. My childhood was surrounded by all manner of tractors hauling long-haul vans, flatbeds, and bellydumps. Reading The Big Rig felt like sitting in a truckstop booth again, listening to stories of the road. Most of the truckers I knew were anti-government regulation and anti-union, while dreaming of financial independence through contracting. None, however, seemed all that independent nor wealthy—indeed, the norm was long hours, living out of their rigs, and taking any job available. What seemed to my young mind to be simply “the way the world was,” was actually, as Viscelli demonstrates, the outcome of a collective class project. 

But, this class project was not the class project of the laborers.

Viscelli uses a case study of a blue-collar occupation to demonstrate a major gap in the sociology of class and mobilization. Much has been written on the working class’s ability to organize, but the coordination of owners and employers is, very often, omitted. In The Big Rig, we see the coordinated effort of employers and third-party companies to socialize workers in such a way that they will accept a more precarious employment relationship. At a broader level, then, The Big Rig reveals the people weaving together precarity and independence under the banner of the American Dream. Just like Amazon’s Same-Day Delivery requires an army of workers, culture does not magically appear and shape our lives. There are flesh and blood people, brick and mortar organizations, actively producing this discourse. That such a coordinated class project might be present in other sectors and industries is a line of inquiry worth pursuing.

Dustin S. Stoltz is a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame, a Doctoral Student Affiliate of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Secretary of RCO2. His research draws on political, economic, and cultural sociology to examine the downstream consequences of stratification on the production and distribution of ideas.