![]() The folks who advocated for the MCA in 1980 were right that trucking has become more competitive, and the savings in transit costs have in part been passed on the consumer. "Deregulation produced the big box store system," Viscelli said. That's allowed big box stores like Walmart and e-commerce to come into existence, while mom-and-pop stores have suffered. Now that companies can send whatever they wish on any route, and because labor is cheaper, it's possible to truck huge amounts of goods from shipping ports receiving goods from China or elsewhere, to distribution centers or stores. The MCA of 1980 also removed regulations that made it impossible for companies to ship goods at scale. The MCA of 1980 helped spur the decline of their wages and working conditions by fostering an overly competitive atmosphere, where firms can only survive through a race to the bottom in cutting wages.īig box stores like Walmart couldn't have flourished without the MCA of 1980, Viscelli said. TRUCK DRIVER SALARY DRIVERSThe decline of 'a good blue-collar, middle-class job'Īs it turns out, those drivers were right in their opposition. ![]() Teamsters is the largest truck driver union, while the ATA represents the corporations that employ them. Indeed, the only folks that seemed against the MCA were the people involved in trucking themselves - the Teamsters Union and the American Trucking Associations (ATA). It was becoming popular for even left-leaning thinkers to advocate for getting rid of government regulation, as Viscelli wrote in "The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream." But the economy in the 1970s was sluggish, and policymakers were looking for a way to ease people's spending.Ĭonservatives had long been against the red-tape-ridden 1935 law, and liberals were joining them. It may seem unusual today for a liberal president to pass a law that deregulates an industry. The law was passed by President Jimmy Carter, who declared that the MCA would save consumers as much as $8 billion ($25 billion in 2018 dollars) each year. Companies also had more control over changing their rates. Most notably, it allowed new trucking companies to open with relative ease and removed many of the route regulations. The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 removed many of the cumbersome regulations that the previous law had put in place. After the 1935 law, it took 45 years for another major law governing trucking to pass. ![]() The trucking industry in that inefficient yet lucrative state had been protected by a host of major corporate and union interests for decades, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Steve Viscelli said. Why a liberal president passed the deregulatory act At least 80% of drivers were unionized at this time. In 1977, the mean earnings of a unionized truck driver stood at $96,552 in 2018 dollars. It was the sort of high-quality, blue-collar job that many lament doesn't exist today. However, the average truck driver during this era was well-paid. ![]()
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