US and Canadian trucking policy

Canada and the United States moved in opposite directions with respect to economic regulation of the intercity trucking industry in 1977. In that year the US Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) began relaxing entry and rate controls while most of the Canadian provisions maintained strict entry regulations and a mixture of rate controls. A decade later, Canada removed many of its entry controls over the trucking industry and the economic regulations governing the trucking industry in both countries again began to converge. What occurred in the intervening 10 or so years is a lesson in market dynamics and political economy. US deregulation had both a direct and indirect effect on Canadian transportation markets and inevitably on the Canadian regulatory system. This chapter traces the regulatory reform events in both countries as pertaining to the North American trucking industry. It is a case study of how regulatory policy in adjacent and interdependent market economies are linked by its market effects. An examination of these effects is useful when considering similar regulatory changes in other geographic environments. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.