University of California Transportation Center

In this paper, we examine the for-hire truckload trucking industry in the U.S. and propose a new auction based carrier collaboration mechanism designed to facilitate economically efficient cooperation among functionally equivalent small and medium sized trucking companies based on a post market exchange. An architecture for such a system is proposed and its economic benefits are examined. Analysis shows that the system is a Pareto efficient one in which no participants are harmed and many are better off. The complex decision problems associated with subcontracting, bidding and bid selection in such a system are investigated.