Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance—Karen Levy (Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton Univ. Press, 2023, 231 pp.)

Abstract

When I Was growing up, my best friend’s father lost his job in the great collapse of Eastern Airlines. I was just a kid, so I did not really understand the ins and outs at the time, but what I now know is that his was a very good job, a union job on the ground crew that paid a genuine middle-class wage. It was the sort of job that was getting harder and harder to come by in late 20th-century America, and in the end, he was not able to find another like it. So, instead, he enrolled in a driving school, earned his commercial driver’s license, and went to work for a long-haul trucking company. At first, he was away from home for long stretches but whenever he returned, he would regale us with tales of his many adventures on the road. After several years, he started to drive more local routes, and after a few more, he financed his own rig and became an owner-operator specializing in shorter hauls. For him, trucking was a smart choice, a way to earn a middle-class wage comparable to what he once made at Eastern. Indeed, the success he found in long- and short-haul trucking seemed to validate all of the rosy promises the industry made (and continues to make) in its recruitment materials. Surely, you have seen them, plastered on the back of 18-wheelers everywhere: “50 cents a mile! No experience needed! Guaranteed home time! Excellent lease-to-own terms available! Call now!”