For close to 100 years, America's surface freight industries, primarily rail and trucking, operated under the protective wing of the U.S. government. In 1980 Congress, finding vast inefficiencies in the two industries, substantially deregulated both, opening them at last to market competition. Deregulation has brought with it many changes—for firms within the industries, for their labor force, and for shippers and their customers. Clifford Winston, Thomas M. Corsi, Curtis M. Grimm, and Carol A Evans provide a comprehensive evaluation of the effect of the deregulation legislation on the rail and trucking industries. According to the authors, deregulation has made substantial progress in solving the two most vexing problems of the surface freight transportation industry—excessive rates in the trucking industry and insufficient returns on investment in the rail industry. Competition and efficiency have returned to both industries, and although the labor force in each has suffered wage and job losses, shippers and their customers have gained roughly $20 billion a year in benefits. The authors recommend policies that would continue to promote competition and the efficient use of highway and railway infrastructure.

This book examines the effects of government intervention on the operations of the freight transportation industry.

Canada and the United States exchange the world's highest level of bilateral trade, valued at $1.4 billion a day. Two-thirds of this trade travels on trucks. Heavy Traffic examines the way in which the regulatory reform of American and Canadian trucking, coupled with free trade, has internationalized this vital industry. Before deregulation, restrictive entry rules had fostered two separate national highway transportation markets, and most international traffic had to be exchanged at the border. When the United States deregulated first, the imbalance between its opened market and Canada's still-restricted one produced a surprisingly difficult bilateral dispute. American deregulation was motivated by domestic incentives, but the subsequent Canadian deregulation blended domestic incentives with transborder rate comparisons and concerns about trade competitiveness. Daniel Madar shows that deregulation created a de facto regime of free trade in trucking services. Removing regulatory barriers has enabled Canadian and American carriers to follow the expansion of transborder traffic that began with the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and continues with NAFTA. The services available with deregulated trucking have also supported sweeping changes in industrial logistics. As transborder traffic has surged, the two countries' carriers -- from billion-dollar corporations to family firms -- have exploited the latitude provided by deregulation. This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the policy processes and economic conditions that led to trucking deregulation. As a study in public policy formation and the international effects of reform, it will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy, international relations, and transportation.

Several of the papers in this volume are concerned with assessing both the timing and the impacts of deregulation and regulatory reform in the US transportation sector. Of increasing interest is the importance of productivity growth and the role played by new technologies in a more competitive market environment. Four of the papers in this volume deal directly with these issues in the context of motor carriers and railroads, two sectors which have been operating under substantially reduced regulatory constraints for the past twenty years in the US. Although the financial condition of US railroads has improved since 1980, there is still some concern regarding their long run viability as private enterprises. Accordingly, one of the papers considers the potential for further reductions in railroad costs through transcontinental mergers, a controversial issue due to the small number of railroads that remain in the industry.

Long hours, low wages, and unsafe workplaces characterized sweatshops a hundred years ago. These same conditions plague American trucking today. Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation exposes the dark side of government deregulation in America's interstate trucking industry. In the years since deregulation in 1980, median earnings have dropped 30% and most long-haul truckers earn less than half of pre-regulation wages. Work weeks average more than sixty hours. Today, America's long-haul truckers are working harder and earning less than at any time during the last four decades. Written by a former long-haul trucker who now teaches industrial relations at Wayne State University, Sweatshops on Wheels raises crucial questions about the legacy of trucking deregulation in America and casts provocative new light on the issue of government deregulation in general.