Professional trucking
Professional trucking is the career followed by professional truckers, who are often self-employed on a freelance basis, or employed by trucking companies. A freelance trucker will typically own his own truck, while company truckers will be paid an hourly wage to drive the trucks belonging to the company for which he works.
Shipping
In the United States, most products are shipped via professional trucking. In prior times, the railroad shipped a lot of goods, but the development of the National Highway System and the consequent general shift from rail transit to the automobile is put more emphasis on trucks as opposed to rail. Very little freight is transported by air; air mail being one key exception. (In contrast to the public USPS, privatized mail services such as UPS and Federal Express still deliver mail in trucks.) Each day, more than 1 million tractor trailers and semis hit the road.
Regulation and Mexico
Professional trucking is a lightly regulated industry. Most trucking companies police themselves, with the caveat that the federal government requires a certain standard of behavior to be met by each employed trucker. For example, truckers coming into the United States from Mexico must be U.S. citizens, or else have green cards that allow them to work within the United States of America. Furthermore, they must be fluent in English, which is necessary to understand essential road signs such as traffic lights and speed limits. American truck companies and drivers have opposed increased competition from Mexican trucks and truckers, and have forced cancellation of an experimental program. This has caused diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Mexico.
Images
The image of the "lone trucker" as an outlaw in American pop culture has been erected over the years in films such as Smokey and the Bandit and Buckaroo Banzai, songs such as "Convoy", and modern TV shows such as Ice Road Truckers. To combat this perception, some organizations have called for stricter certification procedures for professional truckers. For example, truckers might have to pass a written test or even a driving test before being issued their rolling papers. Such calls have met with stern disapproval from trucking companies.
Further reading
- Hamilton, Shane. Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy (2008), excerpt and text search; standard scholarly history
- Birla, Madan. FedEx Delivers: How the World's Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition (2005) excerpt and text search
- Frock, Roger. Changing How the World Does Business: Fedex's Incredible Journey to Success - The Inside Story (2006) excerpt and text search
- Pettus, Michael L. "The Resource-Based View as a Developmental Growth Process: Evidence from the Deregulated Trucking Industry," The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Aug., 2001), pp. 878-896 in JSTOR
- Zingales, Luigi. "Survival of the Fittest or the Fattest? Exit and Financing in the Trucking Industry," The Journal of Finance, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Jun., 1998), pp. 905-938 in JSTOR