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Deregulation shifts the responsibility for mitigation of agency problems from the regulatory parties to the firms' shareholders. We investigate whether and how governance structure changes in response to the dynamics of the new business environment after the Regulatory Reform Act of 1994 for the US trucking industry. We show that deregulation increases market competition in the trucking industry. The deregulated trucking firms not only adjust internal governance structure but also alter antitakeover provisions to adapt themselves to the competitive status of business environment after deregulation.

This paper aims to test the proposition that integrated marketing communications (IMC) practice is lagging in the trucking industry. It stems from the more general proposition extant in the literature that business to business (B2B) IMC practice lags business to consumer IMC practice.

In total, 109 trucking managers attending the American Trucking Association Annual Management Conference are asked which communications tools they use and for which strategic purposes. The new product adoption model (NPAM) provides a means of measuring efficient IMC practice.

Joint space perceptual maps generated by correspondence analysis reveal the association between trucking managers’ IMC mixes and the stages of the NPAM. Inspection shows that trucking managers deploy a relatively large number of traditional and digital tools to support all stages of the NPAM, indicating a sophisticated level of IMC knowledge and practice, contrary to the proposition that IMC practice is lagging in the trucking industry.

This contrary result suggests that IMC practice proceeds at different rates across B2B industries and must be examined on a per-industry basis. In combination with Garber and Dotson’s (2002) trucking IMC study, this study provides a second data point from which the evolution of IMC practice in the trucking industry can be tracked into the future. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the efficacy of the NPAM as a means of measuring the efficiency of IMC mixes, as well as for monitoring and training. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Recent supply chain disruptions have highlighted the global shortage of truck drivers. Because it is a quintessential “masculine” profession, the proportion of women truck drivers is small, although efforts are underway to recruit and retain women. This research offers a comprehensive and theoretically-driven empirical analysis of women in the US trucking industry.

The research utilizes a detailed longitudinal database of 20 million driver inspections from 2010 to 2019. It is paired with US Social Security Administration data to infer the gender of the driver for each inspection. Descriptive evidence is provided, and a logit model is used to test the hypotheses.

The research finds that female truck drivers make up 3.2% of the inspection sample, but their representation has grown by 23.1% over the last decade. Women are vastly overrepresented in the jobs that are the easiest to get and underrepresented in jobs that offer better pay, more regular hours and more time at home. However, the proportion of women in more desirable truck driving jobs has grown from 2010 to 2019, offering positive news for the industry.

The research offers a more credible and realistic statistic for the proportion of women in the industry, contradicting previous industry figures. The research also highlights policy implications for industry stakeholders.

The truck driving industry is vital for a nation's economic sustainability. Truck driving jobs offer better wages and more opportunity than many non-professional female-dominant jobs. The research emphasizes the path to move into jobs that are better suited for women with domestic or family responsibilities.

The authors document hitherto unknown facts about women in the US trucking industry. Using theoretically driven research in organizational science, this study highlights the interplay of supply-side and demand-side factors that help to explain a nuanced perspective of the workforce composition and discusses potential policies to increase the number of female drivers.

One of the distinctive features in Korea and the U.S. trucking industries is the huge difference in the share of owner-operators. While it is around 10~15 percent in the U.S., 80~90% of drivers operate their own truck in Korea. Different from historical explanations of previous researches, this paper deals with this feature theoretically. We examine what brings the difference in asset ownership structures between the Korean and the U.S. trucking industries. Using an analytic framework, we investigate the determinants of truck ownership and the changes in ownership patterns. The model introduces several parameters related to productivities of drivers’ efforts and contractibility to affect drivers’ decision, and values of these parameters in both countries are discussed qualitatively and found to be consistent with the aforementioned characteristics.

The term deregulation, in reference to the (US) Motor Carrier Act 1980, has been used to represent significant reductions in government economic restrictions and government agency involvement in the operations of the transportation industry. Although the Act was a giant step toward regulatory reform, a good deal of statutory regulation did initially remain in place. For the purposes of this article, the term deregulation will be used with the understanding that the deregulated industry is not completely without regulation.

NAFTA established guidelines for creating a seamless trilateral trucking market that has proven problematic to implement. Costs of border delays, traffic congestion, added pollution, and documentation requirements stymie North American policy makers. Use of just-in-time supply chain techniques by shippers exacerbates the inability of border infrastructure to meet time-sensitive traffic demands. This paper reviews NAFTA’s transport provisions and explores Mexican, U.S., and Canadian disputes in the context of continental integration. Progress toward harmonizing labor and equipment standards in the course of instituting NAFTA is investigated. Policies for additional border facilities investments and streamlining procedures are compared to heightened national security concerns.

Develops and estimates efficiency and productivity measures in the US trucking and warehousing industry in the 48 contiguous states during the years 1994‐2000. The model, estimated via data envelopment analysis, accounts for both desirable outputs and undesirable outputs produced by a given vector of inputs. The model establishes an efficient frontier of operation for each year studied and can be used to determine, on an annual basis, which of the 48 states operate on the frontier. The findings indicate that the trucking and warehousing industry does not operate efficiently in all 48 states during the period studied. If the industry were to operate on the frontier of the feasible output set by using inputs to produce outputs efficiently, it could eliminate three to four fatal traffic accidents per state per year, while simultaneously increasing industry income by between $38 to $47 million per state per year. In addition, finds that traditional techniques of estimating efficiency that ignore traffic fatalities bias estimates of efficiency and total factor productivity growth.

Strategic cost structure choices determine how firms divide operating costs between fixed and variable components, and therefore have important implications for financial performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of operating leverage on equity Betas when managers have discretion over firms' cost structures.

Using panel data for publicly listed trucking firms over years 1994‐2006, market model Betas are regressed on controls and alternatively measured proxies for operating leverage: degree of operating leverage, assets in place and percentage of company employed drivers.

Results of this study generally show positively significant coefficients on all three operating leverage variables.

Operating characteristics of many industries require that firms make substantial investments in long‐lived assets that result in high fixed costs (e.g. depreciation), and for these firms cost structure is exogenously or technologically constrained leaving managers with little discretion. In contrast to these types of firms, the authors examine the effect of operating leverage (OL) on Betas when managers have discretion over firms' cost structures. Trucking firms are a particularly interesting industry group for analyzing the impact of operating OL choices on Beta because distinct strategic cost structure choices are available to the management of trucking firms that result in various degrees of OL throughout the industry.

The objective of this research was to examine factors that impact union elections in the trucking sector. Since trucking firms are labor intensive, unions can have an impact on the cost of doing business and competitiveness. One hundred and ninety‐nine union elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board in trucking firms between January 2001 and December 2002 were examined. Type of union, size of bargaining unit, election delays, and voter turnout significantly impacted union win rates. Type of election, type of state, and type of bargaining unit did not impact union win rates. Implications for managers, educators, and union leaders in trucking are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and contribute to the understanding of the critical issue of “driver turnover” in the USA long-haul trucking environment which is becoming a malaise in the transportation sector not only in the USA but also worldwide. Most importantly, it accomplishes this through an exploration of the perceptions of the “drivers” themselves regarding the external customer-base in the trucking industry. This, to the best knowledge of the authors, has not yet been done and so becomes the missing angle in focus on driver turnover research.

This exploratory study employs a qualitative research methodology via in-depth interviews of a select sample of drivers in a field setting followed by content analysis of the responses. This methodology, by and large, is the most suitable for this type of exploration.

A content analysis of the perceptions of drivers reveals several important reasons (or causes) for driver turnover. This paper elaborates on those and offers customer-centric solutions to alleviate the plight of the driver and improve overall performance in the trucking sector.

Needless to say, this exploratory research should be replicated in several other locations within the USA, other settings (e.g. trucking in extreme conditions), and other countries in order to enhance the external validity of the findings and recommendations.

All implications of this research are practical as they have direct managerial significance.

The value of this research lies in the fact that, to the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that explores the perceptions of long-haul drivers regarding the external customer-base of the trucking industry. The findings have direct implications for management in the trucking sector.