Effects of Motor Carriers’ Growth or Contraction on Safety: A Multiyear Panel Analysis

Abstract

Motor carrier safety remains a highly relevant issue for supply chain managers and scholars because carriers’ safety affects supply chains as well as the welfare of the motoring public. This article enriches understanding regarding this topic by investigating how motor carriers’ growth or contraction since the start of the Compliance, Safety, and Accountability (CSA) program in 2010 affects their safety performance. Drawing on core principles from theories regarding internal adjustment costs from economics and nonscale free capabilities from management, we explain why carriers’ growth or contraction should differentially affect various safety metrics tracked by the CSA program. To test our theory, we assemble a multiyear panel data set for over 1,000 of the largest for‐hire motor carriers operating in the United States by melding together several different governmental data sources. We fit a series of multivariate seemingly unrelated regression models to test our hypothesized effects. Our results corroborate our theorized predictions and are robust to alternative model specifications. We conclude by detailing how this work contributes to extant theory, summarizing managerial and policy implications, highlighting limitations, and suggesting directions for further pursuit.

Strategic Purity and Efficiency in the Motor Carrier Industry: A Multiyear Panel Investigation

“…Interestingly, this is similar to the cutoff of 100 power units used by the DOT to distinguish large motor carriers (Miller et al. ).…”

“…12 The median number of average power units was 79.4. Interestingly, this is similar to the cutoff of 100 power units used by the DOT to distinguish large motor carriers (Miller et al 2018b). increase more rapidly when carriers add a new output vis-a-vis changing their output mix.…”

Electronic Logging Device Compliance of Small and Medium Size Motor Carriers Prior to the December 18, 2017, Mandate

“…Such theorization aligns with work in the logistics literature that has similarly approached motor carrier safety (Miller ; Miller et al. ,,) and is useful given its greater practitioner relevance, a key criterion for evaluating theories (Keas ).…”

“…Thus, while information disclosure in the form of the CSA program appears to have helped reduce the rate of safety violations (Miller ; Miller et al. , ), information disclosure does not serve as a substitute for command‐and‐control (C&C) regulation like the ELD mandate. Rather, information disclosure programs should be designed to complement and reinforce C&C regulation, as is the case with the ELD mandate, in that ELD violations began contributing to carriers’ CSA scores as of April 1, 2018.…”

“…This holds in the motor carrier industry in that carriers’ size is strongly positively correlated with their inspection frequency (Miller et al. ). Fourth, larger firms face stronger social pressures for compliance because they have greater brand reputation at risk (van Erp ; Kagan et al.…”