Resumen
The mid 1970s and subsequent 1980s witnessed a broad reduction of governmental restraints on the American trucking industry. The reforms initiated in the United States transportation business under the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan accompanied similar and simultaneous moves in telecommunications, airlines, railroads, as well as banking systems. In a ten-year period from roughly 1975 to 1985, and including the passage of the Motor Carrier Act in 1980, the trucking landscape rapidly broadened to include smaller carriers that differed a great deal from their larger predecessors. While all new freight movers did not survive, more than enough succeeded to change forever the organization of the American trucking industry. Structured differently internally and externally, these new smaller carriers carved various economic niches for themselves throughout the United States. Too small to be perceived a threat by the larger companies, and yet too large to be battered by ripples in the national economy, these often locally-owned carriers thrived and grew under the new framework brought about by the deregulation of the trucking industry. Using the Tupelo, Mississippi-based J & B Services, Inc. as a microstudy, this work examines the creation, survival, and expansion of one such carrier in the new economic environment. While the following article does not attempt to solve the debate between the proponents of trucking deregulation and their critics, it does, however, supply enough evidence for the reader to gain brief insight in the American trucking industry, and both sides of the deregulation argument.