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.

• Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School (The William G. Bowen Series)
• Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
• Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty
• Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs
• Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
• Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation
• Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent
• Neoliberal Apartheid: Palestine/Israel and South Africa after 1994
• Cycle of Segregation: Social Processes and Residential Stratification
• Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line