SERVICE QUALITY AND MOTOR CARRIER COSTS - AN EMPIRICAL-ANALYSIS

This paper overcomes the long-standing problem of measuring motor carr iers' service quality by utilizing service quality data collected from shippers. A service quality controlled cost function is estimated for a sample of LTL motor carriers. It is shown that excluding service qu ality variables from cost estimation significantly underestimates carr iers' scale economies. These scale economies enable large carriers to offer higher quality services at competitive or even lower costs than small carriers.