Why Aren't All Truck Drivers Owner-Operators? Asset Ownership and the Employment Relation in Interstate for-Hire Trucking

Transaction-cost and agency theorists have frequently cited trucks as prototypical user-owned assets, and have consequently predicted a predominance of self-employed drivers who contract with motor carriers. In fact, owner-operators accounted for less than one-third of US trucking activity conducted by large interstate trucking firms in 1991, a proportion that has changed little since deregulation. Given the predictions of organizational economists, why is self-employment in the interstate trucking industry not the dominant organization form? Copyright (c) 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.