Becoming a trucker himself, Viscelli vividly shows his own frustrations in training and out on the road, caught up in the game and hearing stories of workers who haven’t seen their families in weeks and are still struggling to make ends meet. They structure work so that workers play a “miles game” of always trying to maximize time for a little extra pay, and push the allure of becoming an independent contractor, which only indebts them to their company. Aware of these realities, the trucking industry does a masterful job of creating and maintaining the illusion that being a truck driver is still a path toward upward mobility, an honest and true working-class version of the American Dream.

Once among the best blue-collar jobs in the country with one of the strongest labor unions, the deregulation and subsequent greedy practices of the trucking industry turned it into a “bad” one, with very low pay, very long and unpredictable hours, and awful work conditions. But as Steve Viscelli, political sociologist and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, shows in his new book, The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream (University of California Press, 2016), the romantic idea of the hardworking, solitary truck driver making a decent, honest living for his family must be laid to rest. The images are iconic: eighteen-wheelers with muddy steel and chrome, and a driver in aviator sunglasses and a mesh hat. There may not be a more ubiquitous presence on American highways than the truck.

The Big Rig by Steve Viscelli