The intersections of global capital and family rhythms in truck driving: elucidating the Canadian trucking industry labour crisis

ABSTRACT

The trucking industry in Canada, as well as other Western countries, is currently experiencing a significant labour shortage. This crisis has been explored through the lens of mobilities and in relation to how global logistics has impacted the supply chain. Building from these works, this article examines the Canadian provincial trucking industry through a rhythmanalysis framework, based on participant observation and interviews with truck drivers, employer representatives, and key informants. This analysis connects the large-scale rhythms of contemporary global capitalism to familial rhythms at the local level, examining how these rhythm patterns interrelate and the high potential for disruptions. The feminist intersectional focus of the analysis highlights gendered rhythms within the trucking industry and familial life, as well as power dynamics, particularly in relation to logistical power. The intersections of these, often incompatible, rhythms are sources of current pressures within the transportation industry and particularly the lives of truck drivers. These tensions within the lives of truck drivers are linked to recruitment issues and labour shortfalls the industry faces, not only within Canada but globally.

KEYWORDS:

• Rhythmanalysis
• truck driving
• family
• logistics
• gender
• power
• labour shortage

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Lachlan Barber and Emily Reid-Musson for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and the research participants for sharing their stories with me. The following post-doctoral research was funded through the On the Move Partnership. .

Disclosure statement

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

1. Ride-alongs are a mobile methodology in which the researcher travels with those they are studying while they perform their daily travels. In these cases that entailed riding with truck drivers while they picked up and delivered goods within the province of PEI. In-depth information was gathered through these trips which each lasted over nine hours.

2. This is where several days and nights are spent driving consecutively.

3. In PEI this is defined as within 167 km from the company base, or colloquially on the island.

4. “The triangle” is a term used to describe the major transportation and trade corridors connecting Atlantic Canada, the American northeast and Ontario/Quebec.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [895-2011-1019].