Opinion: Trucking Is No Sweatshop

By Daniel P. Bearth

enior Features Writer

Michael H. Belzer, associate director of the University of Michigan Trucking Industry Program, a former truck driver and union sympathizer, has written a book that claims to trace the effects of deregulation on the trucking industry.

Provocatively titled “Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation,” the book puts a spotlight on some of the most disturbing trends in trucking today.

Belzer’s basic contention is that unbridled competition has unleashed a race to the bottom, in which independent and nonunion truck drivers are forced to accept lower pay, work longer hours and put up with increasingly dangerous and unsafe conditions on the road just to make a living.

A recent survey by the University of Michigan indicates that the typical long-haul driver works 65 hours per week and drives 117,000 miles per year. Many drivers work 80 to 100 hours a week, far in excess of the legal limit. With no penalty or disincentive to discourage use of drivers, many truck drivers “sweat” their labor, working harder and longer hours to maintain their earnings, Belzer said.

Unlike most American workers, truck drivers are exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which limits hours worked and requires employers to pay overtime.

Belzer’s message certainly resonates with many drivers and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union whose representation of truck drivers has declined from an estimated 60% in 1980 to 25% today.

ut the book is also garnering a sympathetic audience among trucking managers in the United States and government agencies in Australia and Europe, where public officials are keen to learn from the American experience with deregulation.

Belzer acknowledges that trucking companies are in the same fix as drivers, forced to accept low rates while providing ever-increasing levels of service to shippers that, at best, are indifferent to the plight of drivers and that, at worse, deliberately abuse drivers by limiting access to facilities, holding up freight deliveries and making take-it-or-leave-it demands on carriers.

While Belzer is careful not to say that what is needed is a return to the strict regulatory environment put in place by the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 — and which continued virtually unchanged until 1980 — he strongly suggests that government can and should play a bigger role in mitigating the adverse consequences of “market” regulation.

What does Belzer recommend be done? He lists three courses of actions — although each has major drawbacks when applied to trucking.

Extending minimum wage and overtime pay to truck drivers, for instance, might raise pay for some, but would cost others their jobs. Curtailing hours of service might reduce the work load, but it could also seriously limit drivers’ earnings.

The third option, collective bargaining, is already in place, although Belzer suggests that the government can do more to “level the playing field” and tip the balance of power from trucking management to labor.

y view is different.

Granted, some drivers are underpaid, but many make a good living, including tens of thousands of independent owner-operators who’ve shed the reckless cowboy lifestyle that was prevalent in the 1960s and ‘70s and have learned how to run their trucks as true businesses.

Competition has kept freight rates down, but Belzer downplays or ignores the role that competition has played in eliminating waste and inefficiency and spurring the development of an advanced, technically superior transportation system. Imagine what it would be like today, for instance, if AT&T had never been broken up. The phone system was very predictable, very reliable and costly. The 1984 breakup of AT&T — triggered by a lawsuit filed by a small company called Microwave Communications Inc. (now MCI WorldCom) that had developed a communications system for trucking companies — has led to innumerable innovations (and some may say confusion) from cell phones to satellite broadcasting and 5-cent Sundays.

Belzer infers that the difficulties experienced by drivers have made trucking less safe. However, there are fewer crashes and fewer truck-involved fatalities on the highways today than in the 1970s. It is ironic that the public perceives trucking as less safe today, but that is a result, in no small measure, of efforts by so-called highway safety advocates, with financial support from the rail industry, to publicize truck crashes and the response of government agencies to that pressure.

Belzer’s book has struck a chord with drivers and trucking management. But just as America doesn’t like to contemplate the fortunes of farmers when the price of wheat drops below $1 a bushel, we can ignore the plight of drivers until we are no longer able to get essential goods delivered to our homes and businesses.

Trucking is hardly a sweatshop on wheels, but the problems raised in Belzer’s book are too important to ignore. The current shortage of drivers is already reversing wage trends. The market does work, and maybe it could work better with a nudge from the government. But nothing Belzer describes in his book warrants a return to the days of regulation under the strong arm of government.

Mr. Bearth covered the financial news of the trucking industry for more than 12 years and now concentrates on special projects for Transport Topics.