Steve Viscelli

He grew up in Rome, New York, and later lived in Philadelphia.⁠[1]

He earned a BA in philosophy from Colgate University and in 2002 an MA in anthropology from Syracuse University.⁠[2][3]

He recalls that in 2005 he left his low-paid but relatively comfortable life as a sociology graduate student to become a long-haul trucker and find out why truckers’ conditions had worsened.⁠[1]

He said his pay worked out to about $9.42 an hour of on-duty time, and that the hardest part was the time away from home, 12 to 19 days on the road at a stretch.⁠[4]

In 2010 he received a PhD in sociology from Indiana University.⁠[3]

His long-standing interest in climate change began as a research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 2011 he developed the idea of “Urban Truck Ports,” where highly aerodynamic long-haul trucks would swap trailers with electric urban trucks to avoid congestion, improve fuel efficiency and get drivers home more often.⁠[5]

In April 2016 the University of California Press published his The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream, based on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of observation, including his own time training and working as a long-haul trucker.⁠[6]

The book shows how inexperienced workers are persuaded to lease trucks as independent contractors, and how deregulation and employer collective action transformed a labor market once dominated by the most powerful union in U.S. history.⁠[6]

In October 2016 he discussed The Big Rig and the trucking industry on Philadelphia’s WHYY radio.⁠[7]

He said truckers’ golden age began with federal regulation in 1935 and ended in 1980, and argued that many nominally independent contractors lack control over their work and are in reality workers rather than independent businesses.⁠[4]

By early November 2016 he had recently been appointed a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.⁠[8]

In 2017 The Big Rig won the Outstanding Book Award in Labor Relations and Labor Economics from Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry’s Industrial Relations Section, the Max Weber Award from the American Sociological Association’s Organizations, Occupations and Work section, the Outstanding Book Award from the ASA Inequality, Poverty and Mobility section, and co-won the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award of the ASA Labor and Labor Movement section.⁠[9]

In May 2018, ahead of a forthcoming report, he predicted that some parts of the country might be as little as five years from autonomous trucks hauling freight, and that lost long-haul jobs would be partly offset by new local and last-mile jobs.⁠[10]

In July 2018 he proposed ten ways to improve truckers’ lives, including ending company training contracts, adopting an apprenticeship model, paying for all hours worked and clarifying the independent-contractor relationship.⁠[1]

He spoke on Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker at the TRUCK2018 meeting of the University of Pennsylvania’s PRECISE Center.⁠[11]

In September 2018 his report Driverless? Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker, written for the UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry Center for Labor Research and Education and Working Partnerships USA, was released; it found that autonomous trucks could replace as many as 294,000 long-distance drivers, including some of the best jobs in the industry.⁠[12]

The report analyzed six adoption scenarios, estimated that about 83,000 of the at-risk jobs were stable careers paying $60,000 to $70,000 a year, and recommended a multi-stakeholder “Trucking Innovation and Jobs Council.”⁠[13]

He said the risk of autonomous trucks is not that there will not be enough jobs for American truckers but that there will not be enough good jobs, and called for a formal process to involve drivers, carriers and communities.⁠[14]

In 2020 he received a $48,500 grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth for research on technology and outsourcing in last-mile delivery.⁠[15]

The project, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Equitable Growth, compares how drivers work at USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon Flex and Amazon Delivery Service Partners; he has interviewed about 130 drivers.⁠[16]

On January 19, 2021, he and Issues in Science and Technology senior editor Lisa Margonelli held an online conversation, “How Will Robot Trucks Change American Life?”, on how automated trucking might transform American life.⁠[17]

In a related podcast he argued for shaping the future of work and technology through effective policy rather than trying to predict it.⁠[18]

He appeared on episode 237 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast as a former truck driver turned University of Pennsylvania economic sociologist; topics included ethnography, the challenges of driving a truck, the state of the trucking industry, the future of autonomous trucks and the role of society.⁠[19]

As of October 2026 he is a professor of practice in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, studying how self-driving trucks and e-commerce affect drivers.⁠[3]

He is also a faculty fellow of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, working on transportation.⁠[20]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.steveviscelli.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

University of Pennsylvania: Official website: https://www.upenn.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]