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The Trucking Industry Program
(TIP) is the only academic program in the United States
engaged in comprehensive research on issues associated
with labor, the firm, and the operations and technology
in the trucking industry. The Program is noted for recently
conducting a survey of the nation’s truck drivers at select
truck stop interview sites to address issues of truck
driver safety, pay, performance, and quality of life. The
publicationAnd Lord Let It Be Palletized: A Portrait
of Truck Drivers’ Work and Lives resulted from survey
data.
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Other recent research publications include
E-Commerce and the Changing Terms of Competition in the
Trucking Industry: A Study of Firm Level Responses to
Changing Industry Structure, a study of the impact of
information technology and the Internet on industry and
firm productivity; Trucking in the Age of Information,
an overall view of the industry; and Innovation in Logistics
- the Drive to Business Excellence, a study of the globalization
of innovation in the logistics and supply chain industry.
Current research includes a better understanding
of supply chain design that explicitly takes into consideration
the possibility of major disruptions (e.g., extreme weather,
SARS, major accidents, terrorist threats and attacks),
the usual day-to-day fluctuations in demand, the price
of energy, etc., as well as productivity. TIP researchers
are also exploring trucking fleet management issues associated
with security and efficiency for the intermodal movement
of freight, with particular emphasis on temperature-controlled
freight such as many food products.
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Research efforts rely on direct observation
and the integration of theory and have fostered
business improvements at industry sites. Examples
include work done by TIP doctoral students with
Ryder Integrated Logistics to minimize total in-plant
inventory and transportation costs by route and
load selection; United Parcel Service to develop
a scheduling system to predict work levels per route
and balance work levels throughout the day for pick
up and delivery; and several less-than-truckload
firms for network and route design.
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The Program continues to be actively
addressing forces affecting the industry and their
impact on firm core competency dynamics, the impact
of information technology on the industry, driver
wage and safety issues, less-than-truckload (LTL)
best practices, the role of the owner-operator,
and a cross-industry transportation and logistics
best practices study.
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EST. 1995