The Real Story on the How US Trucking Deregulation Was Promoted

Executive Summary

• Trucking has seen a continual degradation in standards since deregulation in the 1980s.
• The economists who advocated for deregulation were never held accountable.

Introduction

The trucking industry has seen a continual decline in standards since deregulation. This decline has not been appropriately assigned to deregulation.

See Our References

Our references for this and other related articles are at this link.

President Jimmy Carter’s Deregulation of the Trucking Industry

Under Carter, the trucking industry was deregulated. While presidents receive the credit or blame for bills they sign, the blame for trucking deregulation goes far and wide. It implicates many elite interests that laid the groundwork for the terrible outcomes we have seen since 1980 in trucking. This is explained in the following quotation.

Proponents of deregulation persistently gathered academic backing for their position, with private foundations, think tanks, and university academics collaborating build a broad case. Over time, leading academic economists arrived at a nearly universal consensus that economic regulation in key industries, most notably utilities, transportation and communications, resulted in inefficiency and should be eliminated. In the 1970s, think tanks politicized this consensus through a series of intellectual and lobbying efforts that promoted an agenda of deregulation. A revolving door between universities, think tanks, and governments — for example, membership on the Council of Economic Advisers — gave deregulation advocates access to the highest levels of decision making. In tandem, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and other think tanks published papers and ran conferences on concrete proposals to deregulate various industries. Trucking was on the top of their wishlist. – Steve Viscelli

This is how the elites, supported by elite money, have knocked down regulations and protections for workers in industry after industry. After the results are predictably disastrous, it is very rare for the originators of these corrupt ideas to be held accountable.

Trucking Industry Coopts Universities and University Economists

Many economists who supported trucking deregulation were employed as economics professors at universities. This also shows how universities have been coopted by industry and how they generally oppose the interests of most of the working population. This extends even more so to the present day where universities have become “mini Ellis Islands” serving as a gateway for foreign students who come in on student visas, which are a type of scam and a stepping stone to immigrate from their countries and bring in more labor competition against domestic US workers. These large numbers of foreign students increase the number of workers, which drives down wages. Universities first promised education that would lead to higher wages, now they allow in more workers into the US, depressing wages.

There is virtually no area of the economy where universities are not aligned with elite corporate interests to drive down wages.

How Economists Aligned With Corporations Against Workers

A second group that is nearly universally in opposition to economic sustainability, ecology, and labor is economists, who naturally strongly favor deregulation. This is explained in the following quotation.

President Carter, meanwhile, was seeking a way to address stagflation and increase fuel efficiency. His chief economic advisor, Charles Schultze, pointed out one reason Carter was inclined to favor deregulation: “If you polled 500 economists you’d get 499 to say you ought to do it.” – Steve Viscelli

Economists = Corporate Mouthpieces

Just the fact that so many economists supported trucking deregulation should have been considered reason enough not to do it. If a mainstream economist says something, that thing will be bad for workers and good for corporations. However, when Jimmy Carter listened to these economists, he did not know at the time that nearly all economists were simply mouthpieces for the financial elite.

The following quote describes how the trucking regulations were finally passed.

Eventually, the combination of stagflation, the oil crisis, and the independent truckers’ strike helped push through trucking and railway deregulation. Led by Senator Ted Kennedy and economist Alfred Kahn and signed into law by President Carter, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 would eliminate oversight on shipping rates and competition in the trucking and railway industry. It limited the Interstate Commerce Commission’s (ICC) authority over trucking (the ICC was later abolished in 1995), which had overseen the transportation industry for over 40 years. Combined with airline deregulation in 1978, it was the complete deregulation of the transportation industry. – Every Which Way but Regulated: The “Free Market” Trucking Industry

The Undeniable Outcome of Trucking Deregulation

Deregulation created a long-term decline in the trucking industry standards to the point where the job is poorly paid for the work involved and unappealing, causing a high turnover of truck drivers. This has created what the industry calls a “driver shortage.” This is the cover story to prevent the public and potential and current truck drivers from understanding the full degree to which trucking companies and the industry overall has debased the job of truck driver.

Interesting Quotes on this Topic

The following quotes provide interesting observations and perspectives on this topic.

Comment #1: How Things Changed in the US by the 1950s

In the early days of trucking, truckers often toiled long hours for low pay. But by the 1950s they had organized across much of the nation. Those collective efforts, along with the government regulation of the industry, which began during the New Deal, made trucking good, well compensated work. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, when the industry was deregulated, truckers were the best paid and most powerful segment of the US working class. – Steve Viscelli

Comment #1: Elite Control Over Societies

The “free market” religion that the rich have converted many Americans into believing is centralizing wealth and power in the hands of a FEW THOUSAND PEOPLE that CONTROL more than half of the world’s wealth. Half of everything: money, land, machinery, 75% of stocks (to control decision making), etc. Again: HALF OF EVERYTHING!
The very people who keep telling us that centralizing control of the economy is evil have centralized the economy under their them. They own controlling shares all of global mass media, and have gotten the Supreme Court to make their corporations super citizens, and their money into speech. – McGloin, Commenter on New York Times article. 

Comment #3: On the Tiered Employment System

One of the villains in this piece is the rise of the independent contractor system. This is a scourge across a wide variety of industries. Big tech firms are huge abusers. Take Microsoft. They have tiers of employees, even down to which level of the Microsoft store you can shop at!

The independent contractors have no benefits and limits to the months they can work before the job ends and they can’t be rehired (IF they are rehired) for 6 months. They shop on the 1st floor of the Microsoft Store. Regular employees, hard positions to get, can shop on the Second Floor of the Microsoft Store. VIP’s are the only ones who can shop on the Third Floor. Those with the super high wages get the super duper deals.

This is how big business wants our country’s workers stratified. Those who support right wing legislators and judges – THIS is the system you have been enabling across all industries. Those of you confined to the First Floor of the American Store – stop voting for the GOP who wants to bar you from the 2nd Floor. – DB, Commenter on New York Times article. 

Comment #4: How a Similar Problem Affects Canadian Rail Workers

The trucking sector is hardly unique in its exploitation of workers within the transportation industry. I am a locomotive engineer with a major Class I railway here in Canada. Like truckers, I’m paid on a per mile basis which means that I’m not remunerated unless the wheels are moving. This has many damaging implications. A 12 hour trip is paid the same as a 6 hour trip. Because of dead time spent at away from home terminals, round trips usually equate to around 36 hours, most of that time essentially unpaid. The company harangues workers to work, three 36 hour trips per week not being abnormal. Everyone operates on an on call basis with no structured or reliable schedule by which the worker can gauge when he or she will be required for duty. Most workers are subject to duty periods that run 24/7, time off only for mandated rest, vacation, or an “earned day off” accrued after 30 days of no absences, taken at the company’s discretion on days allotted to the worker. Fatigue becomes a major factor very quickly, and, over time, general health breaks down. In my terminal alone, over 80 employees of working age have fatally succumbed to illness over the past decade, a horrific rate of attrition. – Marcus Brandt, Commenter on New York Times article. 

The Similarities Between Trucking Deregulation in the US and Europe

This article has focused on the US trucking market. However, deregulation and an influx of Eastern European drivers have led to similar declines in standards in the EU trucking market. This is a major objective of the EU — to drive down wages using the reduction in movement of labor. This causes people to move from Eastern and Central Europe, where labor protections are low, to Western Europe, where labor protections are much higher. For example, Easter and Central European truck drivers have been driving Western European truck drivers from their jobs.

This video shows how poor treatment of truck drivers in the UK led to a driver shortage as many drivers began working in continental Europe.

The same issue is covered in this video. This driver “hates driving in the UK.” And the leadership in the UK could not care less. However, they will notice when products don’t get delivered, and they will then decry the “driver shortage.”

Sensitive Content is Content From a Worker’s Perspective?

It is curious that you can’t watch the video embedded in this website but must open it on YouTube. One wonders if it is because it shows the worker’s perspective and is, therefore, monitored content according to Google. 

How the EU Drives Down Wages

The movement of Central and Eastern European drivers does nothing to improve the labor standards in Central and Eastern Europe, but it reduces the labor standards in Western Europe. The EU means more workers and lower wages per worker — the dream outcome for employers.

Marketing EU Labor Wage and Standard Degradation to the Great Unwashed

This is why the establishment media is so in favor of the EU. The EU increases the revenues for companies that the establishment media rely upon for their income. For this, the media appeals to things like free trade but also personally attacks anyone who does not support the plans of the EU. If you do not want your wages and labor standards reduced, you are a racist.

Conclusion

The trucking industry employs economists and authors who produce content that gaslights the public into preventing the full extent of the decline of standards in the trucking industry from being known. As soon as an industry is deregulated, the quality of the jobs and worker protections immediately begin to decline.

• Many things described as efficiency improvements are just reducing the pay and benefits for workers in the deregulated industry.
• The reduction in the quality of trucking jobs has drastically increased the turnover of truck drivers.
• This has led the industry to call for a further reduction in standards to combat the “labor shortage.”

Trucking Deregulation Economists Are Nowhere to be Found

The economists who provided false projections about what would happen due to trucking deregulation have never been held accountable. These economists measured the success of any policy not as efficiency, and certainly not labor standard maintenance, but profit maximization for the corporations.

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