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The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream
Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets--once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history--into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.
285 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 30, 2016
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549 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 2, 2021
It came to my attention while watching Frontline. A book about the trucking industry. There was a time of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. Jimmy was a crook but he did help provide a good life for truckers. That crashed when Jimmy Carter deregulated the industry. After which carriers got smart and sold drivers on bring independent and owning their own rig. Thus they own cost of fuel, repairs, healthcare etc..It is a rough life working 70-90 hrs a week. Not home a lot. Truckers are not treated well. A good read in that I knew so little about trucking.
August 11, 2021
excellent overview of the modern trucking industry. viscelli did the actual work of trucking for a few months, interviewed 75+ drivers, and dug deep into the current structure of the long-distance TL business. an easy read, surprisingly jargon-free - discussions of "methods" are confined to an appendix and even there are far from abstruse. highly recommended.
i interviewed a veteran trucker on my podcast. you can listen to that here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/work-of...
i interviewed a veteran trucker on my podcast. you can listen to that here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/work-of...
November 14, 2016
I was interested in learning about the trucking industry (in particular the widely reported driver shortage) but could not find a credible source to explore the topic in detail. This book provides excellent insight into the trucking industry generally and the driver shortage in particular. It does a fantastic job penetrating a lot of the misinformation spread by the large trucking firms in a way that is only possible through the first hand experience and interviews that the author accumulated.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the North American trucking industry.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the North American trucking industry.
December 17, 2024
Book Review
The Big Rig
"The confidence trick of owner operating; required reading for neophyte truckers/would be owner operators."
*******
Of the book:
-209 pages of prose; 24 pages of data and methods
-209 pages/6 chapters + Into≈30pps/chapter
-206 point citations≈1/page. Respectably sourced
-includes glossary, index, bibliography
*******
A book like this should be as influential as "das Kapital," if for no other reason than the fact that the author actually did the work and lived the life of the subjects he was studying. (Karl Marx never set foot in a factory in the decades that it took him to write his magnum opus.)
Many, many thoughts:
1. One strange thing is that the author wrote a book 11 years after he actually did the research. (And the book was written in 2016)
2. This is a specific example of a general case in the United States, which is: after the Second World war there was a labor shortage and expectations for wages were set WAY TOO HIGH.
The subsequent decades required a lot of painful grinding down of expectations, for which a lot of people found *every other* explanation than the correct one ("exploitation"/"greedy employers," etc.)
3. Conditions have changed a lot since this book was written 8 years ago (again, 11 years after the researched events), and after the implementation of electronic logs across all trucks, wages have increased dramatically - - and that is because companies can no longer cheat. (Back when I was working first working as a trucker and getting my experience over the road, it was very common to divide the miles by the log speed in order to shave hours off of the book--as the author notes.)
No more.
4a. Over the road is not fun, but it's not the only type of trucking--and I do know that this author wants to portray all the worst parts of trucking because he has an agenda. There is also local, and regional. (I myself do nearly all of my work within about a 20 mi radius and my earnings are sufficient to get the mortgage, two cars, and private tuition for children paid.)
4b. Per mile is not the only way to be paid. You could be flat rate (this is the most common way for dedicated runs), hourly, or paid as a percentage of the load.
4c. This author mainly talks about brokered loads (this is where loads are figured out one at a time), but there also exist contracted loads and "shuttling" (this is where you do the same load several times a day / week).
5. It seems that the author worked for Werner (and people who are inside the industry can put together the clues and see that he also appears to have been talking about Swift and Roehl). They are not fun to work for, and the training is also not fun; but you have to get your foot in the door somewhere before you can find a better job.
6a. Viscelli talks about the owner operator scam, and a moment's thought would tell *any* rational person that an employer doesn't have any incentive whatsoever to pay an owner operator more of the load for no reason at all. Owner operator has to come with some risk, and there are a lot of unintelligent truckers and.... "a sucker is born every minute."
6b. In reality, the rubber (of needing to sell product and turn a profit in an industry with cutthroat competition and very low margins) has to meet the road (knowing *who is* your mark/ market/ dupe and what your sales techniques have to be) for a LOT of industries.
Do we fault casinos for duping people out of money? (Even though the calculations are basic statistics.)
Do we fault car dealerships for trying to sell leases that a reasonable person would calculate not to be cost effective?
Do we fault Onlyfans for not telling everybody that the average performer makes $1,300 per annum?
Trucking is not a special case, looked at in this way.
6c. When a driver is sitting and staring at the road for 10 hours per night, he MUST consider that the costs of operating a truck (accounting, repairs, brokerage, etc) are cheaper spread over a larger number of units than only 1 or 2. If this thought has never occurred to him, then his head is as empty as a flower pot and he's going to have to learn the hard way.
C'est la vie.
7a. In a gold rush, the people that get richest are the ones selling shovels and beer and not necessarily the ones digging for gold. So, it's not hard to believe that some businesses would cash in on selling management services to owner operators.
7b. Leasing companies (Driver Source/ Transforce/etc) are another tactic that employers can use to shield themselves from the responsibility of an employee / employer relationship (workman's comp, Social security, liability, etc). From the driver's perspective, it's good to know that they are there because they are another way to make a living locally.
8. What other way could it be? In an industry burdened with overcapacity, prices just have to fall to market clearing levels. Nothing new needs to be adduced here.
*******
In spite of the fact that the author did actually do the work that he is talking about, there seem to be a number of familiar lines of reasoning:
1. Labor theory of value: Drivers are worth some inherent amount, instead of just what the market will bear (p. 9).
2. Arbitrary coherence: everything is the way that it is just because, and legislation can make it just be another way. (So, this author brings: unionization, re-regulation. It's odd that he does, given that a significant part of the book is spent detailing carriers' workarounds for inconvenient legislation. Also, what does it look like trying to unionize an industry with such filthy overcapacity?)
3. (p.203) Class struggle. "The history of trucking can be understood as a struggle between drivers and carriers for control over working conditions and pay."
4. Just " discourse" 'all over the place--sometimes three or four times per page.
I'm really grudging about reading something by authors that use the word "discourse" a little bit too frequently (almost wish I had bought this on Kindle to see how many times he does.)
Verdict: I would recommend a copy of this job to anybody that was going to trucking school or within the first several months of his career. (He could read this during dock time/ in the hotel at night after classes.)
Forewarned is forearmed.
Quotes:
(p.139) "Workers become small business owners. Employers become business partners. Income becomes profit. Lower incomes and unpaid time become investments."
The Big Rig
"The confidence trick of owner operating; required reading for neophyte truckers/would be owner operators."
*******
Of the book:
-209 pages of prose; 24 pages of data and methods
-209 pages/6 chapters + Into≈30pps/chapter
-206 point citations≈1/page. Respectably sourced
-includes glossary, index, bibliography
*******
A book like this should be as influential as "das Kapital," if for no other reason than the fact that the author actually did the work and lived the life of the subjects he was studying. (Karl Marx never set foot in a factory in the decades that it took him to write his magnum opus.)
Many, many thoughts:
1. One strange thing is that the author wrote a book 11 years after he actually did the research. (And the book was written in 2016)
2. This is a specific example of a general case in the United States, which is: after the Second World war there was a labor shortage and expectations for wages were set WAY TOO HIGH.
The subsequent decades required a lot of painful grinding down of expectations, for which a lot of people found *every other* explanation than the correct one ("exploitation"/"greedy employers," etc.)
3. Conditions have changed a lot since this book was written 8 years ago (again, 11 years after the researched events), and after the implementation of electronic logs across all trucks, wages have increased dramatically - - and that is because companies can no longer cheat. (Back when I was working first working as a trucker and getting my experience over the road, it was very common to divide the miles by the log speed in order to shave hours off of the book--as the author notes.)
No more.
4a. Over the road is not fun, but it's not the only type of trucking--and I do know that this author wants to portray all the worst parts of trucking because he has an agenda. There is also local, and regional. (I myself do nearly all of my work within about a 20 mi radius and my earnings are sufficient to get the mortgage, two cars, and private tuition for children paid.)
4b. Per mile is not the only way to be paid. You could be flat rate (this is the most common way for dedicated runs), hourly, or paid as a percentage of the load.
4c. This author mainly talks about brokered loads (this is where loads are figured out one at a time), but there also exist contracted loads and "shuttling" (this is where you do the same load several times a day / week).
5. It seems that the author worked for Werner (and people who are inside the industry can put together the clues and see that he also appears to have been talking about Swift and Roehl). They are not fun to work for, and the training is also not fun; but you have to get your foot in the door somewhere before you can find a better job.
6a. Viscelli talks about the owner operator scam, and a moment's thought would tell *any* rational person that an employer doesn't have any incentive whatsoever to pay an owner operator more of the load for no reason at all. Owner operator has to come with some risk, and there are a lot of unintelligent truckers and.... "a sucker is born every minute."
6b. In reality, the rubber (of needing to sell product and turn a profit in an industry with cutthroat competition and very low margins) has to meet the road (knowing *who is* your mark/ market/ dupe and what your sales techniques have to be) for a LOT of industries.
Do we fault casinos for duping people out of money? (Even though the calculations are basic statistics.)
Do we fault car dealerships for trying to sell leases that a reasonable person would calculate not to be cost effective?
Do we fault Onlyfans for not telling everybody that the average performer makes $1,300 per annum?
Trucking is not a special case, looked at in this way.
6c. When a driver is sitting and staring at the road for 10 hours per night, he MUST consider that the costs of operating a truck (accounting, repairs, brokerage, etc) are cheaper spread over a larger number of units than only 1 or 2. If this thought has never occurred to him, then his head is as empty as a flower pot and he's going to have to learn the hard way.
C'est la vie.
7a. In a gold rush, the people that get richest are the ones selling shovels and beer and not necessarily the ones digging for gold. So, it's not hard to believe that some businesses would cash in on selling management services to owner operators.
7b. Leasing companies (Driver Source/ Transforce/etc) are another tactic that employers can use to shield themselves from the responsibility of an employee / employer relationship (workman's comp, Social security, liability, etc). From the driver's perspective, it's good to know that they are there because they are another way to make a living locally.
8. What other way could it be? In an industry burdened with overcapacity, prices just have to fall to market clearing levels. Nothing new needs to be adduced here.
*******
In spite of the fact that the author did actually do the work that he is talking about, there seem to be a number of familiar lines of reasoning:
1. Labor theory of value: Drivers are worth some inherent amount, instead of just what the market will bear (p. 9).
2. Arbitrary coherence: everything is the way that it is just because, and legislation can make it just be another way. (So, this author brings: unionization, re-regulation. It's odd that he does, given that a significant part of the book is spent detailing carriers' workarounds for inconvenient legislation. Also, what does it look like trying to unionize an industry with such filthy overcapacity?)
3. (p.203) Class struggle. "The history of trucking can be understood as a struggle between drivers and carriers for control over working conditions and pay."
4. Just " discourse" 'all over the place--sometimes three or four times per page.
I'm really grudging about reading something by authors that use the word "discourse" a little bit too frequently (almost wish I had bought this on Kindle to see how many times he does.)
Verdict: I would recommend a copy of this job to anybody that was going to trucking school or within the first several months of his career. (He could read this during dock time/ in the hotel at night after classes.)
Forewarned is forearmed.
Quotes:
(p.139) "Workers become small business owners. Employers become business partners. Income becomes profit. Lower incomes and unpaid time become investments."
December 20, 2022
My third book on long-haul trucking and this comes in second. Thoughts:
- Jimmy Hoffa was apparently a once-in-a-century force of nature who did more good than harm for the industry, but with deregulation and the very higher turnover another Hoffa is not walking through the door anytime soon
- The most interesting part of the book was Chapter 2, the driver describing his daily life as a trucker - the loading, the hauls, the dispatches, etc. The second best part were the trucker interviews
- The info is already fifteen years old, and from what I can gather things have changed a bit for the better, with plenty of drivers who have 2+ years experience getting cut 90K a year jobs for Wal-Mart post-pandemic
- It is pretty shady that this is one of the only jobs where you basically have to pay to apply, via the CDL licensing. The big national chains train the new drivers and then get to pick the best ones. Pretty good game for them it seems
- The second half of the book is basically a screed against contracting, how it's bad for the driver and costs him ~20% of his income per year, as the freedom to turn down loads is hardly ever exercised and the benefit of being paid as an employee is gone. Portrayed as an illusion of freedom that benefits the employer and not the drivers
- Jimmy Hoffa was apparently a once-in-a-century force of nature who did more good than harm for the industry, but with deregulation and the very higher turnover another Hoffa is not walking through the door anytime soon
- The most interesting part of the book was Chapter 2, the driver describing his daily life as a trucker - the loading, the hauls, the dispatches, etc. The second best part were the trucker interviews
- The info is already fifteen years old, and from what I can gather things have changed a bit for the better, with plenty of drivers who have 2+ years experience getting cut 90K a year jobs for Wal-Mart post-pandemic
- It is pretty shady that this is one of the only jobs where you basically have to pay to apply, via the CDL licensing. The big national chains train the new drivers and then get to pick the best ones. Pretty good game for them it seems
- The second half of the book is basically a screed against contracting, how it's bad for the driver and costs him ~20% of his income per year, as the freedom to turn down loads is hardly ever exercised and the benefit of being paid as an employee is gone. Portrayed as an illusion of freedom that benefits the employer and not the drivers
March 23, 2018
A great mixed-methods study of the world of trucking. This is the rare study in which the academic author spends a significant chunk of time actually training for and doing the work of driving a rig. His tracing of changes in the trucking industry and the toll this takes on the working lives of the truckers is impeccable. What is happening to truckers is and has been occurring in other jobs and occupations, unfortunately. This book is a warning call to the future of work.
December 9, 2021
Skip to the conclusion
The conclusion was probably enough and not sure if warranted an entire book. An important theme regarding contract workers and how it leads overall to worse overall employment conditions. Maybe some potential solutions or policy changes to address these issues would have made it a more substantive piece.
The conclusion was probably enough and not sure if warranted an entire book. An important theme regarding contract workers and how it leads overall to worse overall employment conditions. Maybe some potential solutions or policy changes to address these issues would have made it a more substantive piece.
November 1, 2018
Confusion
More confirmation that trucking leases are actually fleeces. I still don’t know what truck driving was like in the 1920’s. How many hours were drivers driving before log books and electronic logging devices were required?
More confirmation that trucking leases are actually fleeces. I still don’t know what truck driving was like in the 1920’s. How many hours were drivers driving before log books and electronic logging devices were required?
April 22, 2021
An interesting book although a little dry. It is an outgrowth of the author's dissertation research (which may be why it sometimes reads a little slow). But he provides a useful overview of the industry and includes tidbits from the interviews he did and even the over-the-road experience he had.
October 24, 2022
This book describes almost my exact experience being trained and employed by a major truck load carrier in the mid 1990s. Now that I have read something that validates my bad experience being employed in the trucking I know this was/is far from an isolated experience.
November 4, 2018
Good overview of the state of the trucking industry and how it got to this point.
March 2, 2023
This is an excellent book. Want to know how big rig drivers end up not making a good living although they drive constantly for weeks at a time? Read this book. Want a great book to give a new driver or potentially a person that think they may want to start a career? Give this book. It is an excellent source of material to give one much to think about. It as blunt as a bat to the head. This is not about bunnies and unicorns, but how working harder may actually lead to a worse living situation. All of the tricks are spelled out.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream is excellent. Not for the writing, it is a tad dry, which makes sense because Steve Viscelli started this work out as a Doctoral thesis. It is not a beach read, it is a heavy read that requires both effort and thought. But it is excellent for the expertise and incredible insight. The author actually lived on the road as a driver while he was studying the industry. Actually living the life and seeing first hand. What comes across is a bad marriage of a tight industry with thin margins of profit and trying to squeeze out every penny. This leads to passing the externalities onto unsuspecting new drivers looking for the dream. Basically companies have found ways to pass all of the cost and liabilities onto drivers while still controlling the work flow.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream is not all industry bashing and there is quite a bit of history explaining how the industry ended up where it is now and why. It is every bit as important as what is happening. It also not all the industries fault that not all drivers are either ready or prepared for the rigors. But Steve Viscelli has done an amazing job of presenting the pitfalls in case one wants to try.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream by Steve Viscelli is both a great resource as well as providing food for thought. It is well worth the effort and time to read. I can personally attend to this is factually accurate because I have lived this life and had many of the frustrations as well nearly ending up broke. The same game was played against me. I wish I had read this book before I went down that path.
Very Highly recommended
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream is excellent. Not for the writing, it is a tad dry, which makes sense because Steve Viscelli started this work out as a Doctoral thesis. It is not a beach read, it is a heavy read that requires both effort and thought. But it is excellent for the expertise and incredible insight. The author actually lived on the road as a driver while he was studying the industry. Actually living the life and seeing first hand. What comes across is a bad marriage of a tight industry with thin margins of profit and trying to squeeze out every penny. This leads to passing the externalities onto unsuspecting new drivers looking for the dream. Basically companies have found ways to pass all of the cost and liabilities onto drivers while still controlling the work flow.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream is not all industry bashing and there is quite a bit of history explaining how the industry ended up where it is now and why. It is every bit as important as what is happening. It also not all the industries fault that not all drivers are either ready or prepared for the rigors. But Steve Viscelli has done an amazing job of presenting the pitfalls in case one wants to try.
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream by Steve Viscelli is both a great resource as well as providing food for thought. It is well worth the effort and time to read. I can personally attend to this is factually accurate because I have lived this life and had many of the frustrations as well nearly ending up broke. The same game was played against me. I wish I had read this book before I went down that path.
Very Highly recommended
October 11, 2020
Viscelli's book is a sociological study of trucking, based on his work and interviews with other truckers, while working as a trucker.
August 10, 2025
Good book on trucking but journalist keeps repeating the same ideas paragraph after paragraph in different arrangements. Could be more concise. Also slightly slanted view on some things
April 9, 2023
While Uber gets all the press for exploiting workers, and Starbucks for blocking unions, it’s not surprising this unsexy industry flies under the radar for taking advantage of so many employees/contractors. As consumers we reap the benefits of the broken economics, but at what toll to society? This is a fascinating look into one of the most critical components of the supply chain.
July 6, 2016
A real eye opener
I highly recommend this book. I bought it out of general curiosity about the trucking industry, but o learned a lot more than that.
I highly recommend this book. I bought it out of general curiosity about the trucking industry, but o learned a lot more than that.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews