Combining weekly productivity data with weekly productivity beliefs for a large sample of truckers over two years, we show that workers tend to systematically and persistently over-predict their productivity. If workers are overconfident about their own productivity at the current firm relative...

The US trucking industry trade press often portrays the US labor market for truck drivers as not working, citing persistent driver shortages and high levels of firm‐level turnover, and predicting significant resulting constraints on the supply of motor freight services. We investigate the...

Using evidence from recent work on truckers and disaggregated older data prior researchers did not have, we revisit a classic topic and find some new answers. We focus on differentials in average annual earnings at the firm level among mileage-paid over-the-road tractor-trailer drivers ("road...

"Mirroring the railroad industry of the 1940's and 1950's, the trucking industry today appears to be achieving impressive productivity gains. But it is easy to confuse true productivity advances in transportation industries with changes in ton-miles per unit of input that are due simply to...

The US trucking industry trade press often portrays the US labor market for truck drivers as not working, citing persistent driver shortages and high levels of firm‐level turnover, and predicting significant resulting constraints on the supply of motor freight services. We investigate the...

Firms may be reluctant to provide general training if workers can quit and use their gained skills elsewhere. "Training contracts" that impose a penalty for premature quitting can help alleviate this inefficiency. Using plausibly exogenous contractual variation from a leading trucking firm, we...

Every year, approximately 27% of all jobs in the U.S. truck transportation sector (NAICS 484) are reshuffled across motor carriers as existing carriers grow or shrink, new entrants begin operations, and existing firms exit. Studying how these dynamics unfold, especially for young carriers, is...