Abstract
The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream is a compelling ethnography that explains why and how shifts in U.S. labor policies and business practices have profoundly affected worker mobility and access to the American Dream. Specifically, author Steve Viscelli draws our attention to how industry deregulation and collective action on the part of trucking employers have harmed drivers, degrading the quality of work performed and subjecting truckers to complicity in their own devaluation. This rich ethnographic account is grounded in sociological inquiry of labor relations and age-old questions of capitalist interests and class struggle. Drawing on his own experiences researching and learning to drive a truck himself, Viscelli reveals both the historic processes that have led to the devaluation of truck driving as well as contemporary insights into life on the road.
After a thorough discussion of the history of trucking deregulation and the significant and arguably beneficial role that Jimmy Hoffa and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters played in making the industry a competitive and financially attractive one, Viscelli traces the processes that ultimately led to the depreciation of long-haul trucking in the United States. Drawing on Erik Olin Wright’s concept of “worker associational power,” Viscelli argues that the weakening of truck driving as an occupation, in terms of both real and perceived power, is a result of complex processes that are intended to maximize capital for carriers and carriers only. Consumers and drivers are on the losing end of many of these processes that solidify stratification and class struggle.
In clear prose and in-depth detail, readers learn about the drivers who are trying to play the odds as to whether they drive for miles or dedicated routes in order to maximize profits. Careful description of several companies demonstrates the practice of luring inexperienced drivers into dreaming big and the effect of institutional power on individual lives.
Throughout the book, Viscelli’s personal narratives bring the larger issues into sharp relief. He describes in detail the layovers in truck stops, including the banter between drivers who will likely never see one another again—perhaps an unintended yet powerful metaphor for the alienation that drivers experience on the road.
The heart of the book is composed of several empirical chapters that delve deeply into drivers’ lived experiences. From rich detail on the mundane and often frustrating aspects of driving to the nuanced and insidious ways in which carrier companies now act as both panopticon and barrier to individual success, Viscelli takes us through some of the more memorable and illustrative incidents from his time on the road.
Most importantly throughout the book, Viscelli reminds us that we should be wary of simple answers to complex questions. Here in particular he draws our attention to the industry and its advocates who claim that natural market forces are to blame for the labor tensions and devaluation of the American truck driver. Viscelli instead tells us exactly how the machinations of employers have subtly and not so subtly manufactured the contemporary situation, where drivers, earning lower wages than ever, become ever more dependent on the owner-operator contractor model. His distaste for these insidious practices and of those complicit in creating this decline in wages and working conditions is palpable throughout the text; yet it is a real testament to the value of ethnographic and qualitative research. His is an example of the necessity of rigorous and holistic qualitative work. Statistics can always shed light on part of the picture—we can learn about salaries or rates of employment in the trucking industry along with demographics of those involved in the profession. But it is only through work such as Viscelli’s that we get a more complete understanding of the everyday rhythms of truck driving.
In the final chapter of the book, Viscelli brings us into a scene where protests over high fuel prices have brought a convoy together, and we glimpse some of the potential for individual organization, consciousness-raising, and collective action against exploitation. The vignette begins with some optimism; but once again, the disenfranchisement and alienation that is now ubiquitous among drivers, contractors, and would-be owner-operators takes center stage. It is disheartening at best but overall the perfect ethnographic capstone and one that reminds us that trucking jobs were once the pinnacle of the blue-collar labor market. They offered independence, freedom, and good pay. And yet throughout the book, Viscelli pulls back the curtain to reveal, in Oz-like fashion, the coercive, insidious, and pervasive ways in which carriers convince their employees to become contractors and remain in a system of low wages and servitude.
If there is anything noticeably absent in thebook, it is the fact that very little is said about women in the industry. To be fair, however, there are very few female truck drivers. And Viscelli provides a great discussion of one woman’s challenges in driver training and in the profession to highlight some of the very gendered aspects of the truck driving world. Overall his conclusions about this missing demographic are exactly right—women in these positions are constantly subjected to outdated if persistent stereotypes and hegemonic masculinity, and this is not, in actuality, the subject of this particular book.
For those interested in methodological best practices, challenges, and success stories, there is a tremendously useful appendix at the end of the book. Here, data-collection strategies and a good deal of reflection on the process of this project help to illustrate the complexity and utility of ethnographic research. The appendix itself would be worth assigning as a very short supplementary reading in any class where students are learning how to do qualitative (and even mixed methods) research.
Most of us believe that we would be better off if we had more control over our work lives and our earning potential. Such is the heart of the American Dream, as Viscelli tells us. Nowhere is this clearer than through the evidence that he brings to light through his in-depth research. The Big Rig is a study of deeply ingrained inequality and class difference and the mechanisms through which the trucking industry maintains those divisions among laborers. It would be appropriate for and accessible to any level of sociology student but is perhaps best suited to those studying methodology, economic sociology, labor relations, and stratification.
One can only imagine that listening to Viscelli talk about or teach his material would be riveting, as he has the unique ability to weave ethnographic, historical, and statistical evidence together in his writing. After reading this book, one is left feeling as if they’ve ridden along with an expert in the field, an insider in the world of long-haul trucking, and that much collective action must be taken if we are to renew and invest in the lives of drivers and the U.S. trucking industry.