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From this experience, Lawrence J. Ouellet has the advantage of a rare perspective and a profound understanding of the two fundamental questions he asks in this book: Why do truck drivers work so hard even when it doesn't result in more money or other material gains? and How do truckers make sense of their behavior to themselves and to the outside world? A vivid ethnography of trucking culture, Pedal to the Metal documents and analyzes truckers' lives and work ethic, exploring the range of identities truckers create for themselves—the renegade cowboy, the company man, the voyeur, the lone king of the road. To explain truckers' motivations, Ouellet examines the meaning of work and the motivation for excelling despite long, unsupervised hours on the road. He finds that their occupational pride results in extraordinary efforts on the job and, subsequently, a positive sense of self. Driving skill allows truckers to improve their hauling times, which they proudly track to the minute, and to increase their productivity and income. Truckers' knowledge of the industry's structure and the idiosyncrasies of their own company allows them to improve their ability to get and carry out assignments, to maneuver around a traditional concept of rank and seniority, and to recreate to their advantage the pervasive cultural myths that the public expects should dictate a trucker's behavior. Whether capturing the pleasure and enchantment of trucking—driving under moon-lit skies across a snow-covered mountain range—or the miseries of boredom, bad weather, and exhausting schedules, Ouellet exhibits deep appreciation and passion for his subject.

Regulation, Organizations, and Politics examines the evolution of regulation at the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The ICC has probably had the most profound impact on any federal agency on the way social scientists view politics. From a perspective based in modern political economy, the author develops an analysis that improves our understanding of the determinants of bureaucratic performance and clarifies the conditions under which organizations are likely to have a substantial influence.   Employing a variety of techniques, Regulation, Organizations, and Politics explains how motor carriers, particularly the larger truckers who controlled the American Trucking Association, were unable to control public policy once the chief executive decided to expand substantial political resources on reforming the motor carrier system. The author shows that this failure was rooted in the carriers' inability to offer the requisite rewards and sanctions required to influence those with power over the outcome. This work thus demonstrates that an integrated approach to the intersections of rational, if often incompletely informed, actors can help us to understand phenomena that seem puzzling at first consideration.