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1. Introduction
The passages of a series of landmark transportation deregulatory acts such as the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, the Surface Freight Forwarder Deregulation Act of 1986, the Negotiated Rates Act of 1993, the Trucking Industry Regulation Reform Act of 1994, and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Termination Act of 1995 brought sweeping changes in transportation pricing, carrier market entry, and operating territories in the transportation industry. In particular, these acts allowed the shipper to enjoy the unprecedented range of bargaining room for freight rates and exploit transportation cost saving opportunities. For example, between 1977, a year before the ICC started to relax its control over the industry, and 1982 two years after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 was introduced, rates for truckload-size shipments fell by about 25 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. The General Accounting Office found that freight rates charged by less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers had fallen by as much as 10-20 percent, with some shippers reporting declines of as much as 40 percent (Moore, 2008). Thanks to declining freight rates, the US transportation costs were reduced to 3.9 percent of GDP in 2013 from 7.4 percent in 1980 (Case Logistics, 1980; Penske Logistics, 2014). Since trucking-related costs comprised 77.2 and 77.4 percent of total transportation costs and 47.5 and 48.4 percent of total logistics spend in 2013 and 2014, respectively, trucking-related cost savings could be translated into total logistics cost savings (Gilmore, 2014; Penske Logistics, 2015). Indeed, transportation cost (e.g. trucking-related cost) patterns often paralleled with logistics cost patterns and transportation cost accounted for the largest portion of overall logistics cost (Penske Logistics, 2014, 2015). A similar pattern can be found in other countries such as South Africa (Havenga and Simpson, 2014). Although transportation deregulation dramatically increased transportation cost saving potentials, it created ambiguity and confusion regarding the fairness and reasonableness of freight rates for a given transportation service. Such ambiguity and confusion have often led to transportation price (shipping charge) differentials for the same service due to wide ranging negotiation outcomes. A similar problem has existed in Europe in that the freight rate for a certain route was once determined based on the lump-sum costs. Such a transportation pricing scheme created a difficulty for the shipper in ascertaining the primary cause...