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A review by lpm100
Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream by Steve Viscelli, Steve Viscelli
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
5.0
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."