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Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door-Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
In Arriving Today, Christopher Mims goes deep, far, and wide to uncover how a single product, from creation to delivery, weaves its way from a factory on the other side of the world to our doorstep. He analyzes the evolving technologies and management strategies necessary to keep the product moving to fulfill consumers’ demand for “arriving today” gratification. Mims reveals a world where the only thing moving faster than goods in an Amazon warehouse is the rate at which an entire industry is being gutted and rebuilt by innovation and mass shifts in human labor practices. He goes behind the scenes to uncover the paradoxes in this shift—into the world’s busiest port, the cabin of an 18-wheeler, and Amazon’s automated warehouses—to explore how the promise of “arriving today” is fulfilled through a balletic dance between humans and machines.
The scope of such large-scale innovation and expended energy is equal parts inspiring, enlightening, and horrifying. As he offers a glimpse of our future, Mims asks us to consider the system’s vulnerability and its resilience, and who shoulders the burden, as we hurtle toward a fully automated system—and what it will mean when we are there.
The scope of such large-scale innovation and expended energy is equal parts inspiring, enlightening, and horrifying. As he offers a glimpse of our future, Mims asks us to consider the system’s vulnerability and its resilience, and who shoulders the burden, as we hurtle toward a fully automated system—and what it will mean when we are there.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
July 27, 2021
Sweeping Revelations And Generalities Need Better Documentation. As narrative nonfiction where facts are presented without documentation in favor of a more stylized, narrative based approach, this book works. And it does pretty well exactly what its description promises- shows the entire logistics industry from the time a product is assembled overseas through its travel to the port of origin to loading onto a ship to being offloaded from said ship onto trains and trucks into the very heart of fulfillment centers and delivery services all the way to your door. It uses a blended reality approach of the emerging COVID crisis, wherein Mims claims to have actually been in Vietnam as it was beginning to a more hypothetical "this is where this item was on this date"... right as global shipping began its "holiday everyday" levels of the early lockdown period in particular, and this approach serves it well as a narrative structure.
That noted, it also uses its less-documented, more-editorial nature to have constant political remarks, where YMMV on the editorial pieces and the documentation checks in at just 13% of the overall text. (More common range for bibliography sections in nonfiction ARCs tends to be in the 20-30% range in my own experience.) It is also questionable in its facts at times, for example when it claims that the US military's efforts in Vietnam were the drivers of ship-based containerization... which Bruce Jones' To Rule The Waves, to be released on exactly the same day as this book, shows in a much more documented fashion isn't exactly the case. For a reader such as myself that was growing interested in logistics and related issues even before the insanities erupted and who, in fact, read an ARC of Emily Guendelsberger's On The Clock (2019)- cited extensively when this text looks to Amazon and their fulfillment centers directly, among many other similar works such as Alex MacGillis' Fulfillment (2020), the aforementioned Jones text (2021), Plastic Free by Rebecca Prinz-Ruiz (2020), Driven by Alex Davies (2021), Unraveled by Maxine Bedat (2021), and even What's The Use by Ian Stewart (2021)... this book touched on a lot of issues I was already familiar with, mostly from more fully documented texts, but placed them in a comprehensive narrative structure that indeed flows quite well.
Read this book. It really is utterly fascinating, and many of the books referenced above face similar issues regarding their politics, to this one is hardly alone in that regard. But also read those other books to see their particular pieces in quite a bit more detail. Still, in the end this one was quite readable and is sure to generate much conversation among those who do read it. Very much recommended.
That noted, it also uses its less-documented, more-editorial nature to have constant political remarks, where YMMV on the editorial pieces and the documentation checks in at just 13% of the overall text. (More common range for bibliography sections in nonfiction ARCs tends to be in the 20-30% range in my own experience.) It is also questionable in its facts at times, for example when it claims that the US military's efforts in Vietnam were the drivers of ship-based containerization... which Bruce Jones' To Rule The Waves, to be released on exactly the same day as this book, shows in a much more documented fashion isn't exactly the case. For a reader such as myself that was growing interested in logistics and related issues even before the insanities erupted and who, in fact, read an ARC of Emily Guendelsberger's On The Clock (2019)- cited extensively when this text looks to Amazon and their fulfillment centers directly, among many other similar works such as Alex MacGillis' Fulfillment (2020), the aforementioned Jones text (2021), Plastic Free by Rebecca Prinz-Ruiz (2020), Driven by Alex Davies (2021), Unraveled by Maxine Bedat (2021), and even What's The Use by Ian Stewart (2021)... this book touched on a lot of issues I was already familiar with, mostly from more fully documented texts, but placed them in a comprehensive narrative structure that indeed flows quite well.
Read this book. It really is utterly fascinating, and many of the books referenced above face similar issues regarding their politics, to this one is hardly alone in that regard. But also read those other books to see their particular pieces in quite a bit more detail. Still, in the end this one was quite readable and is sure to generate much conversation among those who do read it. Very much recommended.
September 5, 2022
What a delightful book. I learned so much about the intricacies of how our amazing supply chain really functions. It follows the fascinating supply chain journey of a random item (a USB charger) made in Vietnam then arriving a couple weeks later on the doorstep of a San Antonio teen. Mims does a deep dive into what life is really like for all the people in each leg of the chain:
The local drivers who pick it up from the factory
The cargo ship workers who carry it across the seas.
The dock workers who unload it at the port.
The truckers who wind their way through the highways of America.
The Amazon worker who ingests, then packages it.
The UPS workers who sort the boxes.
The UPS drivers who deliver it to the doorstep.
Mims does a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes processes that keep the items moving quickly from place to place. What I found most fascinating was his hard look at the labor challenges these average working people face today. So many of them are independent contractors with no health insurance, benefits or protections from predatory employers.
I heartily recommend this book. It will give you a whole new appreciation for all the avalanche of random stuff that is seamlessly and quietly delivered to your doorstep.
The local drivers who pick it up from the factory
The cargo ship workers who carry it across the seas.
The dock workers who unload it at the port.
The truckers who wind their way through the highways of America.
The Amazon worker who ingests, then packages it.
The UPS workers who sort the boxes.
The UPS drivers who deliver it to the doorstep.
Mims does a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes processes that keep the items moving quickly from place to place. What I found most fascinating was his hard look at the labor challenges these average working people face today. So many of them are independent contractors with no health insurance, benefits or protections from predatory employers.
I heartily recommend this book. It will give you a whole new appreciation for all the avalanche of random stuff that is seamlessly and quietly delivered to your doorstep.
December 26, 2021
Arriving Today is almost certainly one of the more interesting books you're likely to read about the retail supply chain. Mims details each step of the transportation process from a manufacturer in Asia to a cargo ship to trucks and fulfillment warehouses to delivery in an accessible way. He intersperses the information about how the supply chain operates with history about logistics and facts about the lives of the workers who work at various steps in the chain. Many of these facts are gathered by interviewing individual workers and even sitting alongside them in delivery trucks. It's a real eye-opener how physically and mentally difficult some of the jobs are, especially those of the long-haul truckers and warehouse workers. Mims clearly sympathizes with the hard conditions faced by the workers, but doesn't disparage their employers, acknowledging that they work within the law and offer high wages and benefits compared to other low-skill jobs. I definitely came away from the book with a better understanding of the complexities of logistics and the exhaustive efforts made to drive efficiency in delivering products to consumers.
October 27, 2022
"Buy Now"
You've probably hit that little orange button on the world's largest e-commerce platform, but have you ever thought about the complexity and orchestration that is required to make whatever you want appear at your doorstep in no more than two days? Mims is a technology journalist by trade, and he traces the journey of a hypothetical USB charger from a factory in Vietnam to a house in the United States. This book is a fascinating tour of many facets of Logistics Space, and the people who make it work, with the book structured around extended interviews. And with global supply chains snarled by COVID-19, war in Ukraine, and the occasional shipping accident in the Suez Canal, the ability of things to (mostly) arrive today is a wonder.
Container cranes at the Port of Rotterdam. Wikimedia
The journey starts via cargo ship and shipping container, the omnipresent 40 foot boxes which contain pretty much every finished product we use, and the massive ships which carry them. There are nods to The Box by Levinson and Ninety Percent of Everything by George, but this is mostly prelude. The first bit of real action comes at the Port of Los Angeles/Port of Long Beach, where immense cranes rapidly unload containers onto automated carriers, which constantly shuffle containers to make sure that the ones which are to be loaded onto trucks and railcars immediately are at the top of the stack. The port is overseen by dwindling ranks of longshoremen, who's union made a Faustian bargain for some of the only decent wages of anyone in this story in return for unlimited automation that constantly cuts their numbers.
Long-haul trucking is the next branch. There are millions of commercial truckers who are vital to making things move, and they have tough lives driving massive big rigs in traffic and spending long weeks on the road. Trucking was substantially deregulated in the 1970s, lowering costs, but also cutting salaries from six figures in contemporary dollars to an average of $48,000 a year. I'm interested in following up with sociologist Steve Viscelli, who is producing scholarly work on truckers.
The truck finally arrives at an Amazon fulfillment center, and this is where Mims launches into the rhetoric of the technological sublime as it relates to logistics and its culminating ideology, Bezosism. More than the scientific management of Taylorism, or the integrated production line of Fordism, Bezosism is a a total transformation of the solidity of stuff into the fluidity of an endless stream, weaving across shipping lanes and warehouses to be distributed evenly and precisely over the world. Bezosism is also a system of psychological management, not one of drill sergeant-like abuse, but of precisely calibrated metrics that ensure that a worker is moving as fast as they safely can, that they handle the sticky bits of sorting random loose items and stacking boxes that a child can do, and a billion dollar robotics program cannot. Mims' assessment of Amazon is based on his own interviews and On the Clock by Guendelsberger (one of my favorite books of 2021), as well as The Everything Store by Stone, but has its own unique spin.
Mims is a Wall Street Journal writer by day, and while he is captured by the sublime of logistics and the coolness of new technologies making it ever faster, he's also about as critical as he can be. In many respects, these are awful jobs: psychologically tedious and alienating, physically strenuous, and paying peanuts. The broken families of truckers and sailors, and the rising tide of people disabled by repetitive stress injuries in warehouses, are hidden social costs of a system which is reliable, fast, and cheap. Mims' sympathy has an aspect of the Great White Hunter tsk'ing 'shame' over a freshly killed tiger, and then reloading his rifle for another shot. Crocodile tears aside, this is a fascinating story about the people and tools of moving stuff in 2020, both engaging and deep, and synthesizing many books I like and ones I want to read into a cohesive whole.
You've probably hit that little orange button on the world's largest e-commerce platform, but have you ever thought about the complexity and orchestration that is required to make whatever you want appear at your doorstep in no more than two days? Mims is a technology journalist by trade, and he traces the journey of a hypothetical USB charger from a factory in Vietnam to a house in the United States. This book is a fascinating tour of many facets of Logistics Space, and the people who make it work, with the book structured around extended interviews. And with global supply chains snarled by COVID-19, war in Ukraine, and the occasional shipping accident in the Suez Canal, the ability of things to (mostly) arrive today is a wonder.
Container cranes at the Port of Rotterdam. Wikimedia
The journey starts via cargo ship and shipping container, the omnipresent 40 foot boxes which contain pretty much every finished product we use, and the massive ships which carry them. There are nods to The Box by Levinson and Ninety Percent of Everything by George, but this is mostly prelude. The first bit of real action comes at the Port of Los Angeles/Port of Long Beach, where immense cranes rapidly unload containers onto automated carriers, which constantly shuffle containers to make sure that the ones which are to be loaded onto trucks and railcars immediately are at the top of the stack. The port is overseen by dwindling ranks of longshoremen, who's union made a Faustian bargain for some of the only decent wages of anyone in this story in return for unlimited automation that constantly cuts their numbers.
Long-haul trucking is the next branch. There are millions of commercial truckers who are vital to making things move, and they have tough lives driving massive big rigs in traffic and spending long weeks on the road. Trucking was substantially deregulated in the 1970s, lowering costs, but also cutting salaries from six figures in contemporary dollars to an average of $48,000 a year. I'm interested in following up with sociologist Steve Viscelli, who is producing scholarly work on truckers.
The truck finally arrives at an Amazon fulfillment center, and this is where Mims launches into the rhetoric of the technological sublime as it relates to logistics and its culminating ideology, Bezosism. More than the scientific management of Taylorism, or the integrated production line of Fordism, Bezosism is a a total transformation of the solidity of stuff into the fluidity of an endless stream, weaving across shipping lanes and warehouses to be distributed evenly and precisely over the world. Bezosism is also a system of psychological management, not one of drill sergeant-like abuse, but of precisely calibrated metrics that ensure that a worker is moving as fast as they safely can, that they handle the sticky bits of sorting random loose items and stacking boxes that a child can do, and a billion dollar robotics program cannot. Mims' assessment of Amazon is based on his own interviews and On the Clock by Guendelsberger (one of my favorite books of 2021), as well as The Everything Store by Stone, but has its own unique spin.
Mims is a Wall Street Journal writer by day, and while he is captured by the sublime of logistics and the coolness of new technologies making it ever faster, he's also about as critical as he can be. In many respects, these are awful jobs: psychologically tedious and alienating, physically strenuous, and paying peanuts. The broken families of truckers and sailors, and the rising tide of people disabled by repetitive stress injuries in warehouses, are hidden social costs of a system which is reliable, fast, and cheap. Mims' sympathy has an aspect of the Great White Hunter tsk'ing 'shame' over a freshly killed tiger, and then reloading his rifle for another shot. Crocodile tears aside, this is a fascinating story about the people and tools of moving stuff in 2020, both engaging and deep, and synthesizing many books I like and ones I want to read into a cohesive whole.
December 17, 2021
Supply chain problems have been a pervasive and recurrent theme in 2021. By now the world is running short on just about everything, from microchips to workers to raw materials. The pandemic is partly to blame for these disturbances. While shipping delays, a shortage of truckers, and COVID-related plant closures in Asia constrained the supply of goods, consumers in America and elsewhere went on a historic buying spree, fueled by trillions in stimulus funds and the way that businesses have honed the online shopping experience in the last decade. This has resulted in an epic whiplash effect that will continue to disrupt supply-and-demand patterns well into 2022.
But blaming the supply chain mess on COVID is only part of the story. Even before the pandemic, supply chains were becoming fragile as they adapted to meet the pressures of trade wars, rising consumer demand, and a delivery system in urgent need of overhaul. Unfortunately, much of the current media coverage obfuscates the furious, tech-driven dance of people and robots manufacturing and transporting goods from one place to another. Personal experience is no better guide. When we order something on Amazon, we get to glimpse only the proverbial “last mile” of a journey that is much longer and complex than we realize. It’s no accident that we fail to appreciate these everyday miracles. The whole system underpinning the one-click economy is designed to shield the consumer from the stomping beat of the supply chain orchestra.
Unpacking the largely invisible, multi-layered journey from factory to front door is the focus of a timely new book, Arriving Today, by WSJ technology columnist Christopher Mims. For a topic that may seem rather dry and inaccessible, it’s a surprisingly absorbing read and quite the page-turner. Mims succeeds in describing an intricate, world-spanning system with an economy of prose that is remarkable. To grasp the scale and complexity of the global logistics network, he details the two-month long, 14,000 mile (22,530 km) journey of a hypothetical USB charger from its factory in Vietnam to a buyer’s home in the US. This clever narrative device allows him to provide a high-level view of the supply chain and its actors, from global container shipping to long-haul trucking and last-mile fulfillment, while always drilling down to the smallest details of what’s at stake. Along the way, he weaves in reflections on scientific management theory and the future of automation. His findings are at once inspiring and deeply troubling.
Let’s begin with the inspiring. By the time you finish the book, it’s hard to feel anything but awe for the far-flung networks of suppliers, factories, and logistics providers that pull resources from across the globe at incredible efficiency. Mims is right to call logistics one of the most sophisticated fields of human endeavor, despite its sorry state of digitalization (in some links of the chain, data is still exchanged in paper or unstructured emails). The numbers alone are astonishing: More than 800 million units of container shipping are moved through the world’s ports every year, producing immense economies of scale (for reference, it costs about $2 to ship a TV from China to the US). On top of that, the biggest consumer economies shipped over 130 billion parcels in 2020––a volume that is expected to more than double in the next five years. This growth trajectory leads Mims to suggest that the world is increasingly becoming a single, well-integrated factory: “When any one of us orders something online and has it delivered to our door, we are making ourselves the end point of a conveyance system.”
But there is a darker side to the story that economic statistics fail to capture. A constant theme of the book is that automation in logistics still requires a great deal of human involvement to handle functions machines can’t. For example, only 3% of the world’s port container terminals are automated; the other 97% rely on dockworkers to work around the clock to operate the ship-to-shore cranes and land vehicles. Long-haul trucking remains a very labor-intensive industry as well, despite its enthusiastic embrace of technology. Even Amazon is a long way from running its warehouses autonomously: as of early 2019, only 15% of the company’s 175 fulfillment centers included robots. Most of the picking, packing, and shipping is still done by humans, which explains the explosive growth of Amazon’s workforce.
The problem with this kind of semi-automation is the disempowering and demeaning effect it has on workers in the supply chain. Sailors, longshoremen, truck drivers, warehouse workers, and parcel carriers all have to achieve a machine-like efficiency to keep pace with the automation they work alongside. The issue here is not technology per se but the perverse incentives that result from pitting humans against machines. It is quite appalling to read about workers who feel trapped in an “equilibrium of misery,” and treated like “throwaway” people. This is particularly true for trucking, which suffers from a burnout and retention problem so massive that the typical trucking fleet in America must replace 100% of its drivers every year. It is also true for warehouse work, as Emily Guendelsberger points out: “These are jobs where you’re held accountable to robotic standards of efficiency and productivity and you’re expected to quash all your human failings. Being a human is regarded as a failing when you’re in competition with machines and algorithms for your actual job.”
Throughout the book, Mims examines every cog in the supply chain machinery, contextualizing it with perspectives such as Guendelsberger’s. The great strength of his reporting is that it humanizes the supply chain while also pointing the blame at those most responsible: all of us consumers. That doesn’t mean he leaves e-commerce and logistics companies off the hook. He even coins a new term, Bezosism, for the way Amazon uses technology to squeeze performance out of warehouse workers. But at the end of the day, the market delivers what consumers want, and their demand for cheaper goods delivered faster has a direct impact on workers. Through this and other realizations, Arriving Today helped me understand the mind-boggling complexity of the system and learn about the human cost of the incentive structures that shape its current incarnation. That alone makes the book worth it.
But blaming the supply chain mess on COVID is only part of the story. Even before the pandemic, supply chains were becoming fragile as they adapted to meet the pressures of trade wars, rising consumer demand, and a delivery system in urgent need of overhaul. Unfortunately, much of the current media coverage obfuscates the furious, tech-driven dance of people and robots manufacturing and transporting goods from one place to another. Personal experience is no better guide. When we order something on Amazon, we get to glimpse only the proverbial “last mile” of a journey that is much longer and complex than we realize. It’s no accident that we fail to appreciate these everyday miracles. The whole system underpinning the one-click economy is designed to shield the consumer from the stomping beat of the supply chain orchestra.
Unpacking the largely invisible, multi-layered journey from factory to front door is the focus of a timely new book, Arriving Today, by WSJ technology columnist Christopher Mims. For a topic that may seem rather dry and inaccessible, it’s a surprisingly absorbing read and quite the page-turner. Mims succeeds in describing an intricate, world-spanning system with an economy of prose that is remarkable. To grasp the scale and complexity of the global logistics network, he details the two-month long, 14,000 mile (22,530 km) journey of a hypothetical USB charger from its factory in Vietnam to a buyer’s home in the US. This clever narrative device allows him to provide a high-level view of the supply chain and its actors, from global container shipping to long-haul trucking and last-mile fulfillment, while always drilling down to the smallest details of what’s at stake. Along the way, he weaves in reflections on scientific management theory and the future of automation. His findings are at once inspiring and deeply troubling.
Let’s begin with the inspiring. By the time you finish the book, it’s hard to feel anything but awe for the far-flung networks of suppliers, factories, and logistics providers that pull resources from across the globe at incredible efficiency. Mims is right to call logistics one of the most sophisticated fields of human endeavor, despite its sorry state of digitalization (in some links of the chain, data is still exchanged in paper or unstructured emails). The numbers alone are astonishing: More than 800 million units of container shipping are moved through the world’s ports every year, producing immense economies of scale (for reference, it costs about $2 to ship a TV from China to the US). On top of that, the biggest consumer economies shipped over 130 billion parcels in 2020––a volume that is expected to more than double in the next five years. This growth trajectory leads Mims to suggest that the world is increasingly becoming a single, well-integrated factory: “When any one of us orders something online and has it delivered to our door, we are making ourselves the end point of a conveyance system.”
But there is a darker side to the story that economic statistics fail to capture. A constant theme of the book is that automation in logistics still requires a great deal of human involvement to handle functions machines can’t. For example, only 3% of the world’s port container terminals are automated; the other 97% rely on dockworkers to work around the clock to operate the ship-to-shore cranes and land vehicles. Long-haul trucking remains a very labor-intensive industry as well, despite its enthusiastic embrace of technology. Even Amazon is a long way from running its warehouses autonomously: as of early 2019, only 15% of the company’s 175 fulfillment centers included robots. Most of the picking, packing, and shipping is still done by humans, which explains the explosive growth of Amazon’s workforce.
The problem with this kind of semi-automation is the disempowering and demeaning effect it has on workers in the supply chain. Sailors, longshoremen, truck drivers, warehouse workers, and parcel carriers all have to achieve a machine-like efficiency to keep pace with the automation they work alongside. The issue here is not technology per se but the perverse incentives that result from pitting humans against machines. It is quite appalling to read about workers who feel trapped in an “equilibrium of misery,” and treated like “throwaway” people. This is particularly true for trucking, which suffers from a burnout and retention problem so massive that the typical trucking fleet in America must replace 100% of its drivers every year. It is also true for warehouse work, as Emily Guendelsberger points out: “These are jobs where you’re held accountable to robotic standards of efficiency and productivity and you’re expected to quash all your human failings. Being a human is regarded as a failing when you’re in competition with machines and algorithms for your actual job.”
Throughout the book, Mims examines every cog in the supply chain machinery, contextualizing it with perspectives such as Guendelsberger’s. The great strength of his reporting is that it humanizes the supply chain while also pointing the blame at those most responsible: all of us consumers. That doesn’t mean he leaves e-commerce and logistics companies off the hook. He even coins a new term, Bezosism, for the way Amazon uses technology to squeeze performance out of warehouse workers. But at the end of the day, the market delivers what consumers want, and their demand for cheaper goods delivered faster has a direct impact on workers. Through this and other realizations, Arriving Today helped me understand the mind-boggling complexity of the system and learn about the human cost of the incentive structures that shape its current incarnation. That alone makes the book worth it.
January 4, 2022
The first half of this book was great - I found the descriptions of the shipping cargo, harbours and truck drivers fascinating. The second half is mostly about Amazon and on the one hand sl ws down into technical details that are hard to follow, and on the other hand turns the book into some expose of everything that is wrong with Amazon. This includes a complete misrepresentation of Lean and Six Sigma principles that are somehow blamed for the social situation of Amazon's fulfilment centre employees. The rest of the series of the book is sl ghtlybetter, but the Amazon-bashing (whether deserved or not) creeps in until the end.
It would have been great if this book just followed the line of the first half until the end, because that half easily deserves four or five stars. It all gets spoiled afer that.
It would have been great if this book just followed the line of the first half until the end, because that half easily deserves four or five stars. It all gets spoiled afer that.
October 22, 2021
Going in, I thought that I knew a decent amount about how things worked.
Boy was I wrong.
Mims continues the excellent work that he's cultivated in his time at the WSJ. His in-depth portray of the worlds of logistics and shipping should be required reading for students of supply-chain courses. Impeccably researched and written, it's the best book that I've ever read on this increasingly critical subject.
Boy was I wrong.
Mims continues the excellent work that he's cultivated in his time at the WSJ. His in-depth portray of the worlds of logistics and shipping should be required reading for students of supply-chain courses. Impeccably researched and written, it's the best book that I've ever read on this increasingly critical subject.
February 13, 2022
What a rollercoaster of a book! Tracing the journey of an almost underwhelming USB charger across the globe, this books explains everything that goes into how things actually travel. From what goes on at a shipping yard to the many Amazon facilities to the world of automation at the cost of human jobs, the book has it all to really understand the complex web of global logistics. This visual, elegant and comprehensive narration yet again made me wonder ' Do I really need to order this?'
January 11, 2022
Arriving Today is fascinating -- or, at least it is if you're a supply chain nerd like I am -- but it is about twice as long as it needs to be. Its core problem is that it is trying to be two books: a book about supply chains and the shipping industry, and a book about the past and future of Amazon. Mims tries to anchor the book with the anecdote of the USB charger, which is largely effective. However, there are entire chapters where Mims talks about a company trying to make self driving trucks, for instance, and completely loses sight of the charger; the forest disappears for the trees. Some of these chapters, particularly the chapters about the robots and AI, could have been cut, or perhaps better integrated to the general chapters about trucking or last mile delivery; I could imagine a series of fascinating long/medium reads on the WSJ on technology and the futures of various parts of the supply chain movement. The same goes for the description of the US highway system as "Hitler's Highway" and the in depth description of the kaizen management philosophy -- these could have been paragraphs, or pages at most. I love research, but the gift of non-fiction writing is to winnow through the research and kill the digressions, of which there are far too many. The container ship to customer structure is okay, but there are times where things aren't very clear cut, and it's necessery for Mims to jump back and forward a bit. I would have split the book more distinctly into two parts, the 'shipping and port' part, which I definitely found more interesting, and the 'road and warehouse' part. You could title them On Land and At Sea or something like that. This would have allowed the land part to focus more distinctly on Amazon, which I sense is Mims central interest.
I also noticed multiple times where details were repeated, or a not particularly snazzy quote rephrased, in a more boring way, a detail that had been in the prose a few pages earlier. I really appreciated Mims' vivid analogies -- the one about human bodies being water balloons particularly stood out -- and his prose is largely interesting and engaging. That said, someone give this man a lesson in how to write chapter endings! 'We have to start with the man himself' (for the chapter about Taylorism' or 'worker's compensation covers just 21 percent [of workplace injuries]' are utterly bland. While chapters don't require a snappy kicker in the same way a feature might, the overall effect is often inconlusive and highlights some of the overchaptering -- Taylorism may be a big deal, but it doesn't need an entire chapter of talking around the philosophy essentially saying 'it's a big deal but not everyone talks about it'.
Where Arriving Today really shines is in the actual reporting. Mims, like the wonderful journalist he is, finds fascinating, and, importantly, ordinary people to talk to. The third mate on a container ship pacing to get in his step count, the crane operator at the port with a union job who comments that a college degree isn't necessary for his highly skilled work, the 22 year old who loves and hates working for Amazon, and the final character, the utterly likable Jenny the UPS driver. While big head honchos of companies are also quoted, (sometimes secondhand), it is through these interviews that Mims creates the impression that the global supply chain is an unweildy, complex, beautiful system that could break in many ways (and, as the pandemic is gestured towards, already has). And yet it is still surprisingly effective at getting the things people want to the people who want them -- held together with intermodal transport, highways and high seas, and people doing quotidian, difficult work.
I also noticed multiple times where details were repeated, or a not particularly snazzy quote rephrased, in a more boring way, a detail that had been in the prose a few pages earlier. I really appreciated Mims' vivid analogies -- the one about human bodies being water balloons particularly stood out -- and his prose is largely interesting and engaging. That said, someone give this man a lesson in how to write chapter endings! 'We have to start with the man himself' (for the chapter about Taylorism' or 'worker's compensation covers just 21 percent [of workplace injuries]' are utterly bland. While chapters don't require a snappy kicker in the same way a feature might, the overall effect is often inconlusive and highlights some of the overchaptering -- Taylorism may be a big deal, but it doesn't need an entire chapter of talking around the philosophy essentially saying 'it's a big deal but not everyone talks about it'.
Where Arriving Today really shines is in the actual reporting. Mims, like the wonderful journalist he is, finds fascinating, and, importantly, ordinary people to talk to. The third mate on a container ship pacing to get in his step count, the crane operator at the port with a union job who comments that a college degree isn't necessary for his highly skilled work, the 22 year old who loves and hates working for Amazon, and the final character, the utterly likable Jenny the UPS driver. While big head honchos of companies are also quoted, (sometimes secondhand), it is through these interviews that Mims creates the impression that the global supply chain is an unweildy, complex, beautiful system that could break in many ways (and, as the pandemic is gestured towards, already has). And yet it is still surprisingly effective at getting the things people want to the people who want them -- held together with intermodal transport, highways and high seas, and people doing quotidian, difficult work.
December 24, 2021
Semitrucks have 400 to 600 horsepower diesel engines, enough to move forty tons up and down the steepest grade they're likely to encounter. Batteries won't hold enough energy to take a long haul truck any reasonable distance and regenerative braking that makes hybrids so fuel efficient means little to a vehicle that spends most of its time on the road cruising at highway speeds.
Hours of servicer rules used to be flexible. In December 2015 laws mandated the use of electronic logging devices forcing drivers to comply with regulations about how much and when they can drive.
Truckers usually have no significant attachments in their lives being on the road most of the time.
A typical truck doesn't take breaks. It can travel 2000 miles on 300 galloons of diesel and can refuel in less than half an hour. Los Angeles to Florida can take two days.
Amazon receives 10 million orders daily or 115 per second.
Amazon has free coffee and ibuprofen for its workers.
UPS has more than 123,000 vehicles worldwide.
Overtime at UPS pays 50% more than the employees usual wage plus an hour lunch,
They have free health insurance, a pension and 6 weeks a year vacation. Temporary seasonal drivers start at $20 an hour. Amazon drivers start at $15 an hour.
Hours of servicer rules used to be flexible. In December 2015 laws mandated the use of electronic logging devices forcing drivers to comply with regulations about how much and when they can drive.
Truckers usually have no significant attachments in their lives being on the road most of the time.
A typical truck doesn't take breaks. It can travel 2000 miles on 300 galloons of diesel and can refuel in less than half an hour. Los Angeles to Florida can take two days.
Amazon receives 10 million orders daily or 115 per second.
Amazon has free coffee and ibuprofen for its workers.
UPS has more than 123,000 vehicles worldwide.
Overtime at UPS pays 50% more than the employees usual wage plus an hour lunch,
They have free health insurance, a pension and 6 weeks a year vacation. Temporary seasonal drivers start at $20 an hour. Amazon drivers start at $15 an hour.
October 9, 2021
Really interesting glimpse into many topics: huge ships, harbors, truck driver lifestyle, Amazon procedures, history of scientific management. Thoroughly enjoyed it, very readable. It would make a great documentary film! I wished the book included a world map showing shipping routes and photos of a fully container-stacked ship (next to something to show scale). Overlooked unneeded political comments.
March 25, 2022
4.5 rounding up, I’m a facts and figures person and learned so much!
January 24, 2022
Puikiai sudėliota logistikos schema sekant vieną USB pakrovėją gaminamą Vietname kaip jis pasiekia mūsų namus. Labai įdomiai aprašyta judėjimais laivais, perkrovimus uostuose, judėjimą vilkikais bei paskirstymo centruose. Kodėl nededu 5*, tai viduryje kažkodėl nuklystama į darbo sąlygas Amazon'e - tai aprašyta geriau kitose knygose ir nelabai aišku, kodėl reikėjo į tai leistis šitos knygos kontekste.
Bet kokiu atveju - labai įdomu ir rekomendujoama.
Bet kokiu atveju - labai įdomu ir rekomendujoama.
February 21, 2022
Pretty good book. Smart discussion of trucking. Learned some new things about fulfillment centers.
March 28, 2022
I have been sharing tidbits with my husband over supper every night. He’s a non-reader but is so interested in this subject (and I think most of us are) that I won’t be surprised if he picks up my [heavily underlined] copy to read bits himself. As the author says, this IS a book lending itself to skipping around. The subjects interesting me were about:
Container ships
Trucking
Roads infrastructure
Amazon shipping
Author is a good writer and you will find a little humor and some really nice turns of phrase throughout.
Container ships
Trucking
Roads infrastructure
Amazon shipping
Author is a good writer and you will find a little humor and some really nice turns of phrase throughout.
January 2, 2023
The author covers a lot of ground in this book.... literally. This book follows a USB charger from the factory to the customer's doorstep. Along the way, the author visits and/or discusses sea containers, harbor captains, autopilot technologies, Amazon warehouses, and FedEx sorting centers, coffee delivery robots, and more. Many topics are covered and some are more interesting than others, but this book does a good job of conveying the complexity of getting all sorts of items delivered within a day or two of ordering.
May 20, 2022
Global logistics.
How does it work? Who are involved? And foremost: What should we know about it and the latest developments?
Imagine that we order an USB charger online. What happens between placing our order until we receive the order? The brilliant book 'Arriving today: From factory to front door. Why everything has changed about how and what we buy, written by Christopher Mims, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, shows us in an accessible, well explained way with examples and contexts along the way. Pun intended.
How does it work? Who are involved? And foremost: What should we know about it and the latest developments?
Imagine that we order an USB charger online. What happens between placing our order until we receive the order? The brilliant book 'Arriving today: From factory to front door. Why everything has changed about how and what we buy, written by Christopher Mims, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, shows us in an accessible, well explained way with examples and contexts along the way. Pun intended.
November 24, 2021
Absolutely fascinating, multi-layered journey through the human, manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse functions that make up today''s supply chain - for each element, Mims explains the role it plays, and provides a history of the evolution of human and technological s ystems for that element. It is blindingly complex, and while I did find myself wondering what kind of a world we'd have if the same global ingenuity came together to improve the human condition rather than the economy, it's amazing what sophisticated means we've created to achieve economic emds/
March 14, 2022
labai įdomi USB pakrovėjo kelionė iš gamyklos Vietname iki galutinio gavėjo JAV. "Trumpai" apie visas logistikos grandines. Pradžia buvo labai įdomi (man patiko detalumo lygis), tačiau knygai įpusėjus per daug buvo susikoncentruota į Amazon'ą ir kai kurie skyriai buvo per daug ištęsti.
March 24, 2022
"Arriving Today" was outside of my usual genre picks. I heard about it from listening to the author (and journalist) Christopher, who was interviewed as a guest on an NPR podcast. I was fascinated by his re-telling of his journey out at sea. The story follows one USB on its shipping route from Vietnam to someone's door step in Connecticut. Chapters I enjoyed the most were about the actual working conditions of longshoremen, semi-truck drivers, Amazon employees, and UPS drivers. Chapters I enjoyed the least was technical jargon about the shift toward full automation in Amazon warehouses. If I choose to read this again in the future, I would tell myself to not feel obligated to read every chapter like I did this first time. I would tell myself to pick and choose topics of interest to me. Overall, a very enjoyable read!
March 12, 2024
What a book! If you are anything but interested in how that package you ordered online got to your door and the humans, robots and algorithms behind it, this is the book to explain it. The entire supply chain is explained here from manufacturer to consumer. I have an investment background and looked to this book for insights into the logistics industry. Thumbs up!
October 3, 2023
Some chapters were fascinating. I especially enjoyed the container ship chapters. Others were tedious- very detailed. I listened by audiobook at 1.25x and recommend that approach for this one. Overall I consider it time well spent for having “read” this- I certainly learned from it!
May 7, 2022
I learned a lot from this book, although the writing style bugged me a bit. I’m not familiar with Mims’ columns so maybe this is his style, but he seems extremely fond of nested dependent clauses and the excessive commas made his writing come across choppier than maybe intended.
October 21, 2022
Super interesting! I listened on audible. Even though it was technical in parts it was still easy to follow. It gave a great perspective on our future consumer economy & delivery!
October 28, 2021
yawn
good luck
good luck
November 13, 2021
Overall a very thorough look at the global logistics system. While I've read about the different pieces in isolation, seeing the whole supply chain end-to-end was fascinating, and gave me a much more complete picture of modern delivery. I'm glad the author was willing to discuss labor conditions and the decline in quality of these jobs, which can easily be overlooked when it's all hidden away as a consumer. However I felt the book spent a bit too much time discussing Amazon specifically, and had a few instances of presenting small tech start-ups as "the future of X" without much criticism or skepticism of the companies' claims.
November 13, 2021
A nice overview of the behind-the-scenes logistics and labor that goes into transporting manufactured goods to customers via e-commerce. For more in-depth reads on specific parts of the process, I'd recommend:
-Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George -- an in-depth look at container ships
- Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone -- the past, present, and future of Amazon
- Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth -- the gig economy
-Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George -- an in-depth look at container ships
- Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone -- the past, present, and future of Amazon
- Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth -- the gig economy
August 19, 2022
As someone who knows a fair bit about retail and e-commerce, I didn’t think I would gain as many insights as I surprisingly got in this book. Worth the listen as an audiobook.
November 28, 2021
This is a fantastic, modern-day primer on how our global supply chain works, from the factory to the front door. It deals with all aspects in between, in terms of business, process, hardware, and people. Both broad and deep. It is a little heavy handed on the "Amazon is bad" side without any balance on the benefits. However, the criticisms are valid and are themselves not particularly vitriolic, but anchored in facts and data.
I was a little disappointed with the lack of exploration of the concept of slack. But the scope of this book was already broad. Slack may have been more than this book can handle.
I was a little disappointed with the lack of exploration of the concept of slack. But the scope of this book was already broad. Slack may have been more than this book can handle.
October 27, 2021
Quick, light, enjoyable: WSJ journalist describes a typical trip through the supply chain for an item. I would have liked deeper and more detail but it was exactly what I expected.
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