What do you think?
Rate this book
Uncommon Carriers
What John McPhee's books all have in common is that they are about real people in real places. Here, at his adventurous best, he is out and about with people who work in freight transportation.
Over the past eight years, John McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. Uncommon Carriers is his sketchbook of them and of his journeys with them. He rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner and operator of a sixty-five-foot,
eighteen-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats. McPhee attends ship-handling school on a pond in the foothills of the French Alps, where, for a tuition of $15,000 a week, skippers of the largest ocean ships refine their capabilities in twenty-foot scale models. He goes up the tight-assed Illinois River on a
towboat pushing a triple string of barges, the overall vessel being a good deal longer than the Titanic. And he travels by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways traveled by Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John,
in a homemade skiff in 1839.
Uncommon Carriers is classic work by McPhee, in prose distinguished, as always, by its author's warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character.
Over the past eight years, John McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. Uncommon Carriers is his sketchbook of them and of his journeys with them. He rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner and operator of a sixty-five-foot,
eighteen-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats. McPhee attends ship-handling school on a pond in the foothills of the French Alps, where, for a tuition of $15,000 a week, skippers of the largest ocean ships refine their capabilities in twenty-foot scale models. He goes up the tight-assed Illinois River on a
towboat pushing a triple string of barges, the overall vessel being a good deal longer than the Titanic. And he travels by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways traveled by Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John,
in a homemade skiff in 1839.
Uncommon Carriers is classic work by McPhee, in prose distinguished, as always, by its author's warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 16, 2006
About the author
John McPhee
124 books1,653 followersJohn Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 264 reviews
March 3, 2017
For 35 years I did what I did (fairly enjoying the first 34). John McPhee, in this book, lets me imagine a few other trades: Tony in the cab of an 18-wheeler, carrying hazmat; Tony pushing a thousand feet of (15) barges up the "tight-assed" Illinois River; Tony sorting packages in a UPS center, letting UPS pay for my college; Tony in a coal train, wearing a T-shirt that says, "UNION FISH STRIKE MORE". On my days off, I'd paddle a canoe one week with my brother on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, just like those Thoreau boys once did, but with likely more beer. Forget that I'd wreck, crash, get my head severed in a quick stop. I'm reading; and I can do anything.
No, this did not make me want to take a course on operating an ocean liner, which McPhee did; but I indulged myself in meeting wonderful characters -- better than fictional ones.
Like the hazmat driver who turns to McPhee and says, "Do you know of a writer named Joan Didion?" (McPhee: I was too shy to say, "Take the 'of' out.") He's read McCarthy's The Border Trilogy three times because, like Moby-Dick, "you learn something new every time." He shares an argot (murdercycles, speedo (speeding ticket), lollipop (mile marker)) but also sprinkles in "paucity" and speaks of "circadian rhythms". McPhee tells us: He said "shit" and "fuck" probably no more than you do.
And I learned stuff.
I learned that the French coined the name "Illinois" but "are not responsible for Ill Annoy."
I learned about the classic sound of locomotives:
As the clarinettist Skip Livingston e-mailed the tubist Tom Spain, "I've been listening carefully. The trains differ--different locomotives have different pitches to their horns. But I did hear one while I was moving snow on Sunday morning, and I was able to get to the piano before I lost the notes. They were A-sharp, E, and F-sharp below middle C, which made it sound like an F-sharp-7 chord (minus the C-sharp). The instruments that would come closest to the sound would probably be trombones."
I learned this about railroad grades:
The steepest mainline railroad grade in the United States is Saluda Hill, coming off the Blue Ridge of North Carolina at five per cent--a thousand vertical feet in four miles. It is not presently used. To get up it, trains were cut into thirds. To get down it, Dick Eisfeller says, "they were extremely careful, put it that way."
I learned that San Diego, thinking itself pretty, has few truck stops. "They have no support structure for trucks. The closest real truck stop east is at a casino sixty miles away. The closest to the north is Los Angeles County; to the south, in Mexico. To the west, nothing, for obvious reasons."
And I learned the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and the door of a Freightliner: You can close the door on a Jehovah's Witness.
No, this did not make me want to take a course on operating an ocean liner, which McPhee did; but I indulged myself in meeting wonderful characters -- better than fictional ones.
Like the hazmat driver who turns to McPhee and says, "Do you know of a writer named Joan Didion?" (McPhee: I was too shy to say, "Take the 'of' out.") He's read McCarthy's The Border Trilogy three times because, like Moby-Dick, "you learn something new every time." He shares an argot (murdercycles, speedo (speeding ticket), lollipop (mile marker)) but also sprinkles in "paucity" and speaks of "circadian rhythms". McPhee tells us: He said "shit" and "fuck" probably no more than you do.
And I learned stuff.
I learned that the French coined the name "Illinois" but "are not responsible for Ill Annoy."
I learned about the classic sound of locomotives:
As the clarinettist Skip Livingston e-mailed the tubist Tom Spain, "I've been listening carefully. The trains differ--different locomotives have different pitches to their horns. But I did hear one while I was moving snow on Sunday morning, and I was able to get to the piano before I lost the notes. They were A-sharp, E, and F-sharp below middle C, which made it sound like an F-sharp-7 chord (minus the C-sharp). The instruments that would come closest to the sound would probably be trombones."
I learned this about railroad grades:
The steepest mainline railroad grade in the United States is Saluda Hill, coming off the Blue Ridge of North Carolina at five per cent--a thousand vertical feet in four miles. It is not presently used. To get up it, trains were cut into thirds. To get down it, Dick Eisfeller says, "they were extremely careful, put it that way."
I learned that San Diego, thinking itself pretty, has few truck stops. "They have no support structure for trucks. The closest real truck stop east is at a casino sixty miles away. The closest to the north is Los Angeles County; to the south, in Mexico. To the west, nothing, for obvious reasons."
And I learned the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and the door of a Freightliner: You can close the door on a Jehovah's Witness.
May 2, 2016
“On the horizon there were no trees. Deer and antelope were everywhere at play, much too young to care what had happened to the range..."
-- John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers
McPhee is one of my favorites. I think his strongest form is the long-essay and I love his collections that are thematic. Uncommon carriers delivered exactly what I wanted with a bunch of surprises. Like always, McPhee is able to mix together great characters, fantastic observations, and a real sense of space and place and tell a story that illuminates some place or time that you have probably driven past without noticing a hundred times before.
McPhee has a a geologist's curiosity and patience (and a poet's pen) that allows him to spend an inordinate amount of time with a story to get that one detail that turns a good essay about boats into a fantastic essay about the craft of work, the beauty of place, the magnificence of the ordinary. The magic of McPhee isn't just that he writes new journalism almost better than anyone else on the planet, it is that he does more of it than almost anyone else. Up McPhee's other sleeve is his ability to make you want to follow him on his explorations. He isn't going to chase down your interests (rock stars, movies, money). Instead, McPhee is going to carefully let you follow him down his rabbit holes and help you onto his hobby-horses.
I would also be remiss if I didn't include a part of one of my favorite paragraphs. A barge McPhee is on, is flashed by a woman on a pleasure boat on the Missouri river. Here is McPhee's response:
She has golden hair. She has the sort of body you go to see in marble. She holds her poise without retreat. In her ample presentation there is a defiance of gravity. There is no angle of repose. She is a siren and these are her songs. She is Henry Moore's "Oval with Points".
-- John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers
McPhee is one of my favorites. I think his strongest form is the long-essay and I love his collections that are thematic. Uncommon carriers delivered exactly what I wanted with a bunch of surprises. Like always, McPhee is able to mix together great characters, fantastic observations, and a real sense of space and place and tell a story that illuminates some place or time that you have probably driven past without noticing a hundred times before.
McPhee has a a geologist's curiosity and patience (and a poet's pen) that allows him to spend an inordinate amount of time with a story to get that one detail that turns a good essay about boats into a fantastic essay about the craft of work, the beauty of place, the magnificence of the ordinary. The magic of McPhee isn't just that he writes new journalism almost better than anyone else on the planet, it is that he does more of it than almost anyone else. Up McPhee's other sleeve is his ability to make you want to follow him on his explorations. He isn't going to chase down your interests (rock stars, movies, money). Instead, McPhee is going to carefully let you follow him down his rabbit holes and help you onto his hobby-horses.
I would also be remiss if I didn't include a part of one of my favorite paragraphs. A barge McPhee is on, is flashed by a woman on a pleasure boat on the Missouri river. Here is McPhee's response:
She has golden hair. She has the sort of body you go to see in marble. She holds her poise without retreat. In her ample presentation there is a defiance of gravity. There is no angle of repose. She is a siren and these are her songs. She is Henry Moore's "Oval with Points".
September 13, 2017
McPhee rides on different "carriers." Did not enjoy the stories as much as I hoped I would have by such a fine author.
One of my favorite episodes: The truckers all stare at him, so he buys a cap with a gold visor, an American flag, and so on. Now he fits right in.
Nice science fact worth remembering: Bernoulli's Principle--where the flow is fastest, pressure is lowest--holds airplanes in the sky.
He shows how lobsters are shipped around the world. Lobsters are to Christmas dinners in France what turkeys are in America. Shipping live lobsters around the world is just animal cruelty in my view.
At a public hearing, Wyoming officials outline how they plan to sterilize coyotes. One rancher says, "We don't want to fuck the coyotes, we want to get rid of them." There is an underlying failure of getting along with nature throughout the book.
T-shirt on a fisherman: "UNION FISH STRIKE MORE."
Dick Eisfeller of Greenland NH films trains for a living. He will film for 24 hours straight without sleeping at times.
One of my favorite episodes: The truckers all stare at him, so he buys a cap with a gold visor, an American flag, and so on. Now he fits right in.
Nice science fact worth remembering: Bernoulli's Principle--where the flow is fastest, pressure is lowest--holds airplanes in the sky.
He shows how lobsters are shipped around the world. Lobsters are to Christmas dinners in France what turkeys are in America. Shipping live lobsters around the world is just animal cruelty in my view.
At a public hearing, Wyoming officials outline how they plan to sterilize coyotes. One rancher says, "We don't want to fuck the coyotes, we want to get rid of them." There is an underlying failure of getting along with nature throughout the book.
T-shirt on a fisherman: "UNION FISH STRIKE MORE."
Dick Eisfeller of Greenland NH films trains for a living. He will film for 24 hours straight without sleeping at times.
March 19, 2017
There is a growing branch of literature which consists of nonfiction. How is that possible? The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus for her work, which consists primarily of interviews of people affected by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl or the Soviet War in Afghanistan. As for Americans, we have John McPhee, who has written a series of nonfiction works of high literary quality.
I have just finished reading his Uncommon Carriers, which deals, in turn, with long-haul truckers; a place in France where ships’ pilots are trained; boats that tow barges on American rivers; the parcel sorting services of UPS; and mile-and-a-half-long coal trains. In between, there is a delightful essay by the author about retracing the route of Henry David Thoreau and his brother John described in A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers—which I had read when it was first published in the New Yorker.
McPhee likes to take what looks like a boring subject that nobody would write about and turn it into a gem. For instance, there is that tetralogy he wrote about American geology beginning with Basin and Range and ending with Assembling California. One would think that McPhee’s books might be a tad boring, but they never are.
I have just finished reading his Uncommon Carriers, which deals, in turn, with long-haul truckers; a place in France where ships’ pilots are trained; boats that tow barges on American rivers; the parcel sorting services of UPS; and mile-and-a-half-long coal trains. In between, there is a delightful essay by the author about retracing the route of Henry David Thoreau and his brother John described in A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers—which I had read when it was first published in the New Yorker.
McPhee likes to take what looks like a boring subject that nobody would write about and turn it into a gem. For instance, there is that tetralogy he wrote about American geology beginning with Basin and Range and ending with Assembling California. One would think that McPhee’s books might be a tad boring, but they never are.
June 6, 2010
On CD, this book consists of eight discs, and at the start of the eighth disc the foul language suddenly took a quantum leap, so I stopped listening. Was the author accurately quoting his sources? No doubt. Are there other ways to tell the story without actually quoting the profanity? Of course. Most authors did so routinely until, oh, the past 20 or 30 years or so. I realize there are those who think writing is somehow better or more honest because the actual, repulsive language is used. I quite disagree. If you use foul language on a Duluth Transit Authority bus, the driver will immediately inform you that you must stop using this language or you will have to leave the bus. I think this is a good rule. It applies to my car. It applies to CDs I listen to on my car. The common use of coarse language in our society has not improved society in any way, it has just made it ... coarse.
The first seven discs had some interesting material. They contained the amount of coarse language that I have somehow come to find acceptable, or at least tolerable.
The first seven discs had some interesting material. They contained the amount of coarse language that I have somehow come to find acceptable, or at least tolerable.
March 4, 2010
Divided into six sections based on the mode of "carrier" McPhee is traveling with: HAZMAT truck drivers, Ocean-going cargo ships, Mississippi river barges, Canals of the northeast, UPS/FedEx and deliveries, Freight trains.
Most scientifically fascinating was the cargo ship piece where McPhee attends training school for the captains and skippers of these massive vessels. On a lake in Switzerland, they train using life-size-yet-scaled models. One trainee is practicing a docking maneuver and parks an impressive 6 inches from the pier. The teacher reminds him that at full scale, he's something like 15 yards away. If the birds on the shore of the lake were at full scale, they would be 6 feet tall.
The canal chapter is a total waste- McPhee and a friend follow Thoreau's canoe trip up the Hudson to some spot in Mass. Yawn.
My favorite of course was the truck driving chapter. Not only is it charming and interesting, it spoke to a deep longing to be a truck driver myself. In his epilogue, McPhee revisits truckers saying that "the late-night hum at hundreds of truck stops across America is a quintessential piece of our sonic landscape." Indeed.
Unfortunately this was a book-on-mp3, and McPhee is no voice actor. I was actually stunned to hear a director listed in the "credits," since I had sort of assumed McPhee just decided to settle in with a cup of tea one afternoon and read his whole book quietly to himself. Recommend to anyone interested in quirky engineering and/or is consumed by a burning desire to drive a big piece of machinery.
Most scientifically fascinating was the cargo ship piece where McPhee attends training school for the captains and skippers of these massive vessels. On a lake in Switzerland, they train using life-size-yet-scaled models. One trainee is practicing a docking maneuver and parks an impressive 6 inches from the pier. The teacher reminds him that at full scale, he's something like 15 yards away. If the birds on the shore of the lake were at full scale, they would be 6 feet tall.
The canal chapter is a total waste- McPhee and a friend follow Thoreau's canoe trip up the Hudson to some spot in Mass. Yawn.
My favorite of course was the truck driving chapter. Not only is it charming and interesting, it spoke to a deep longing to be a truck driver myself. In his epilogue, McPhee revisits truckers saying that "the late-night hum at hundreds of truck stops across America is a quintessential piece of our sonic landscape." Indeed.
Unfortunately this was a book-on-mp3, and McPhee is no voice actor. I was actually stunned to hear a director listed in the "credits," since I had sort of assumed McPhee just decided to settle in with a cup of tea one afternoon and read his whole book quietly to himself. Recommend to anyone interested in quirky engineering and/or is consumed by a burning desire to drive a big piece of machinery.
April 12, 2009
I loved this book. I actually read the sections when they appeared in The New Yorker. I assume few changes were made. McPhee must have the best job in the world getting to ride with an over-the-road trucker across the United States; traveling down the Illinois River on a towboat and linked barges (something I've always really wanted to do down the Mississippi with a friend of mine]; and following freight trains from the cab. Talk about your Walter Mitty! His articles and books are filled with juicy little tidbits of detail that I just love reading about.
I love going to locks on the Mississippi and watching the towboats shepherd their charges down the river and through the locks. Another good site to watch is Starved Rock State Park along the Illinois river. Here's my review on the towboat going down the Illinois section of McPhee's book:
The Illinois River is third in freight carried, following the Mississippi and the Ohio. It's a relatively straight river except for some "corkscrew" bends near Pekin. The barges that navigate the Illinois can be huge. The Billy Joe Boling that McPhee is riding (some people get all the fun) is pushing a toe longer than the new Queen Mary 2, the longest ocean liner ever built. Maneuvering such a "vessel" takes skill and sang-froid. At its widest point, this collection of barges and towboat is four times longer than the river's 300 foot width. The Illinois is an autocthonous river (a word I learned from Founding Fish but will probably forget) beginning not far from Chicago.
This particular barge string has fifteen barges wired together carrying pig iron, steel and fertilizer. The ones with pig iron appear empty, but the iron is so heavy and the river channel only nine feet deep at its minimum, that the barges can only be loaded to about 10 per cent of capacity. The steel cable holding the barges together is about an inch thick and the deck hands need to constantly monitor the tension of the wire.. The barges and tug at the stern become almost a rigid unit. The pilot has to steer this mass carefully between railroad bridge pilings and other obstructions. The pilot "is steering the Queen Mary up an undersized river and he is luxuriating in six feet of clearnace." Meanwhile at the stern, behind the stern rail of the towboat, only ten feet away, is the riverbank. This assumes no unusual current changes.
On the Mississippi, a tow can consists of as many as forty-nine barges and be two hundred and fifty feet wide. When they arrive at the Illinois, the consist needs to be broken up into smaller groups. Just by way of comparison, a fifteen barge tow can carry as much as 870 eighteen wheelers on the highway.
All captains have to start as deckhands, and it's not unstressful. One physician who had been asked to study how pilots and captains handled stress, had to leave the boat because he couldn't handle the stress. The river is rarely empty and you can count on being approached by another thousand-foot tow coming at you down the river. Downstream tows always have the right of way. Hold spots, where a tow can be headed into the bank to wait for a downstream tow to pass, are plotted ahead of time and serve like railroad sidings. There is no dispatcher and the captains call traffic themselves announcing their location.
A large tow will burn about one gallon each two hundred feet or twenty-four hundred gallons of diesel fuel per day. Measured by fuel consumed per ton-mile, barges are "two and a half times more efficient than a freight train, nearly nine times more efficient than a truck."
There aren't too many locks on the Illinois as the river drops only about ninety feet, but watching a tow go through one can provide hours of entertainment. I remember sitting at the lock across from Starved Rock State Park as a long tow broke into two sections to get through the lock.
Unfortunately, pleasure boat operators being "ignorant, ignorant, ignorant," accidents happen. Much like train engineers, towboat captains fear boaters who won't get out of the way. It's impossible to steer around a small boat and the prop wash and propeller suction can be lethal to the unwary.
and the section on trains: Driving a train would seem simple enough: you push the lever forward and off you go. Not so. Coal trains, of which just one power plant in Georgia requires 3 fully loaded trains per day to keep running, are usually more than one and one-half miles long and weigh 34,000 tons. They are by far the heaviest trains on the rails. The train is so long that the engine in front (these trains must have engines in front and back and often in the middle as well to adjust the strain on the couplers) will often be applying the brakes going down hill while the engines in back are pushing the cars still going up the other side of the rise. They can't go up hills, per se. A slop of even 1.5% makes the engines work hard.
Twenty-three thousand coal trains leave the Powder River basin every year; that's thirty-four thousand miles of rolling coal in a never ending stream of coal for power plants. The Powder River basin coal generates less heat, i.e. fewer BTU's than eastern coal, but it has a much lower sulfur content so following stricter environmental regulations eastern mines have been dying while western ones are thriving. That's where the railroads come in.
Plant Scherer in Georgia, a large power plant, usually has a one-million-ton pile of coal in reserve. To understand the revived interest in nuclear power, that pile generates the equivalent of one truckload of mined uranium. "To get a million BTUs, fuel oil costs nine dollars (before recent price increases,) natural gas six dollars, coal one-dollar-eighty-five, and nuclear fifty cents."
"Plant Scherer burns the contents of thirteen hundred coal trains per year -- two thousand miles of coal cars, twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The plant requires twelve thousand acres to store, process and burn the coal. Think about that the next time you turn the lights on.
I love going to locks on the Mississippi and watching the towboats shepherd their charges down the river and through the locks. Another good site to watch is Starved Rock State Park along the Illinois river. Here's my review on the towboat going down the Illinois section of McPhee's book:
The Illinois River is third in freight carried, following the Mississippi and the Ohio. It's a relatively straight river except for some "corkscrew" bends near Pekin. The barges that navigate the Illinois can be huge. The Billy Joe Boling that McPhee is riding (some people get all the fun) is pushing a toe longer than the new Queen Mary 2, the longest ocean liner ever built. Maneuvering such a "vessel" takes skill and sang-froid. At its widest point, this collection of barges and towboat is four times longer than the river's 300 foot width. The Illinois is an autocthonous river (a word I learned from Founding Fish but will probably forget) beginning not far from Chicago.
This particular barge string has fifteen barges wired together carrying pig iron, steel and fertilizer. The ones with pig iron appear empty, but the iron is so heavy and the river channel only nine feet deep at its minimum, that the barges can only be loaded to about 10 per cent of capacity. The steel cable holding the barges together is about an inch thick and the deck hands need to constantly monitor the tension of the wire.. The barges and tug at the stern become almost a rigid unit. The pilot has to steer this mass carefully between railroad bridge pilings and other obstructions. The pilot "is steering the Queen Mary up an undersized river and he is luxuriating in six feet of clearnace." Meanwhile at the stern, behind the stern rail of the towboat, only ten feet away, is the riverbank. This assumes no unusual current changes.
On the Mississippi, a tow can consists of as many as forty-nine barges and be two hundred and fifty feet wide. When they arrive at the Illinois, the consist needs to be broken up into smaller groups. Just by way of comparison, a fifteen barge tow can carry as much as 870 eighteen wheelers on the highway.
All captains have to start as deckhands, and it's not unstressful. One physician who had been asked to study how pilots and captains handled stress, had to leave the boat because he couldn't handle the stress. The river is rarely empty and you can count on being approached by another thousand-foot tow coming at you down the river. Downstream tows always have the right of way. Hold spots, where a tow can be headed into the bank to wait for a downstream tow to pass, are plotted ahead of time and serve like railroad sidings. There is no dispatcher and the captains call traffic themselves announcing their location.
A large tow will burn about one gallon each two hundred feet or twenty-four hundred gallons of diesel fuel per day. Measured by fuel consumed per ton-mile, barges are "two and a half times more efficient than a freight train, nearly nine times more efficient than a truck."
There aren't too many locks on the Illinois as the river drops only about ninety feet, but watching a tow go through one can provide hours of entertainment. I remember sitting at the lock across from Starved Rock State Park as a long tow broke into two sections to get through the lock.
Unfortunately, pleasure boat operators being "ignorant, ignorant, ignorant," accidents happen. Much like train engineers, towboat captains fear boaters who won't get out of the way. It's impossible to steer around a small boat and the prop wash and propeller suction can be lethal to the unwary.
and the section on trains: Driving a train would seem simple enough: you push the lever forward and off you go. Not so. Coal trains, of which just one power plant in Georgia requires 3 fully loaded trains per day to keep running, are usually more than one and one-half miles long and weigh 34,000 tons. They are by far the heaviest trains on the rails. The train is so long that the engine in front (these trains must have engines in front and back and often in the middle as well to adjust the strain on the couplers) will often be applying the brakes going down hill while the engines in back are pushing the cars still going up the other side of the rise. They can't go up hills, per se. A slop of even 1.5% makes the engines work hard.
Twenty-three thousand coal trains leave the Powder River basin every year; that's thirty-four thousand miles of rolling coal in a never ending stream of coal for power plants. The Powder River basin coal generates less heat, i.e. fewer BTU's than eastern coal, but it has a much lower sulfur content so following stricter environmental regulations eastern mines have been dying while western ones are thriving. That's where the railroads come in.
Plant Scherer in Georgia, a large power plant, usually has a one-million-ton pile of coal in reserve. To understand the revived interest in nuclear power, that pile generates the equivalent of one truckload of mined uranium. "To get a million BTUs, fuel oil costs nine dollars (before recent price increases,) natural gas six dollars, coal one-dollar-eighty-five, and nuclear fifty cents."
"Plant Scherer burns the contents of thirteen hundred coal trains per year -- two thousand miles of coal cars, twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The plant requires twelve thousand acres to store, process and burn the coal. Think about that the next time you turn the lights on.
August 18, 2023
In the early 2000s John McPhee managed to hitch a ride with a number of guys (yes, all men) who were highly skilled in transporting bulk goods: 18-wheel truck drivers, coal train engineers, towboat captains, ocean-going bulk carrier captains, and others. This book is basically a series of essays about what it takes to move America's goods.
It's a fascinating look at the skills and experience it takes to operate massive vehicles and vessels like these. The language can be rough, and the cigarette smoke can be thick, but you learn a lot about what it takes to do these jobs. They are often dangerous with little room for error.
Until recently we sort of took our supply chain for granted. No more. Now you can read about how the supply chain operated before all hell broke loose three years ago.
McPhee recreates the feeling of being in the cabin with these guys, as he uses their slang often without explaining what it means – you pick it up in context. It's an absorbing way to tell their stories.
It's a fascinating look at the skills and experience it takes to operate massive vehicles and vessels like these. The language can be rough, and the cigarette smoke can be thick, but you learn a lot about what it takes to do these jobs. They are often dangerous with little room for error.
Until recently we sort of took our supply chain for granted. No more. Now you can read about how the supply chain operated before all hell broke loose three years ago.
McPhee recreates the feeling of being in the cabin with these guys, as he uses their slang often without explaining what it means – you pick it up in context. It's an absorbing way to tell their stories.
January 23, 2018
I enjoyed three of the chapters especially: one about a miniature replica in Switzerland of ocean shipping to allow captains to practice maneuvers; another about cross-country trucking; and a third about barge shipping on major American rivers. This is all new information to me, and I like the way John McPhee takes his inexpert eyes and mind into the experience and tells the story to an audience of inexperts. He's pretty funny, too.
December 26, 2018
A major letdown after Coming into the Country, the only other McPhee book I've read, and one of my all-time favorites...
March 30, 2021
Perfectly timed reading, as McPhee explains the Suez canal in the McPhee Way. Perhaps the best journalistic writer America has ever produced.
May 4, 2018
Another book that was a simple and low cost download from Barnes & Noble to my Nook.
As usual with John McPhee, an interesting set of essays regarding travel and shipping. He has a unique way of making what might be mundane and every day activities into something fresh and vivid.
I don't recall ever reading a McPhee piece that did not hold an interest for me. In this book, I would recommend the canoe trip and the piece on the coal train as the best, with the ride with trucker Don Ainsworth a close second.
As usual with John McPhee, an interesting set of essays regarding travel and shipping. He has a unique way of making what might be mundane and every day activities into something fresh and vivid.
I don't recall ever reading a McPhee piece that did not hold an interest for me. In this book, I would recommend the canoe trip and the piece on the coal train as the best, with the ride with trucker Don Ainsworth a close second.
July 15, 2009
This book is a collection of mini-biographies of people in the transportation industry. The first, last, and by far most compelling tells the story of a long-haul trucker -- a driver that owns his own rig and tank, transporting various goods. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing a real expert at work: someone that not only knows how to do their job well, but truly and deeply knows how to handle any eventuality effortlessly. The truck driver in this book is unquestionably an expert of that variety.
Unfortunately, the other stories aren't quite as interesting. A few of them are interesting enough -- although not up to the standard of the first one -- but the rest are sub-par. One is about Thoreau's travels with his brother, that the author replicates -- somewhat. It seems out of place, compared to the rest of the pieces, and it's not even that enjoyable to read. There's another piece on UPS, which should have been a highlight (goodness knows that there is a huge untapped mine of stories there) but was only so-so: some parts of that one are enjoyable to read, but those parts are more about UPS's anonymous subcontracting of, well, almost anything (laptop repair, order fulfillment, etc), and not about transportation.
In the end, I really enjoyed this book. I just wish the author would have dropped about half of it, and either expanded the rest or found other high-quality segments to replace it.
Unfortunately, the other stories aren't quite as interesting. A few of them are interesting enough -- although not up to the standard of the first one -- but the rest are sub-par. One is about Thoreau's travels with his brother, that the author replicates -- somewhat. It seems out of place, compared to the rest of the pieces, and it's not even that enjoyable to read. There's another piece on UPS, which should have been a highlight (goodness knows that there is a huge untapped mine of stories there) but was only so-so: some parts of that one are enjoyable to read, but those parts are more about UPS's anonymous subcontracting of, well, almost anything (laptop repair, order fulfillment, etc), and not about transportation.
In the end, I really enjoyed this book. I just wish the author would have dropped about half of it, and either expanded the rest or found other high-quality segments to replace it.
September 1, 2007
John McPhee is one of my favorite New Yorker writers. This book is a collection of articles whose common theme is the magnitude of the transportation systems that criss-cross America. He hangs out with a long-haul trucker, visits UPS's main hub (through which everything produced by Americans seems to flow), retraces a river journey made by Thoreau, rides a coal train from Wyoming to Georgia, and floats down the Mississippi on a barge. The book is quite intimate, as McPhee focuses on the ordinanry folks who guide these systems; but their sheer scale and scope is ever present, and eventually one is left awe-struck that it works at all.
December 16, 2007
John McPhee specializes, like Tracy Kidder, in detailed and ruminative reportages about things and people we see everyday, but seldom think about. In this collection of articles, he primarily studies transportation, describing the workings of long-distance trucking, coal trains, cargo ships, barges and a memorable case study of the workings of "The Sort", UPS' humongous sorting facility in Loisville, Kentucky.
Moving writing, quite literally. An example for any academic writer trying to explain what makes modern society tick.
More at my blog.
Moving writing, quite literally. An example for any academic writer trying to explain what makes modern society tick.
More at my blog.
January 2, 2010
McPhee can sure write! And he turns the ordinary into a fascinating read. Really enjoyed this.
April 23, 2018
Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee is a collection of transportation pieces. McPhee has engaged in participatory journalism by embedding himself in different situations. The first chapter is titled “A Fleet of One.” McPhee hits the road with Don Ainsworth in his sixty-five foot chemical tanker. They travel from the Carolinas to Oregon, then to San Diego and then back east to Tennessee. The trucker’s lifestyle is interesting and Ainsworth’s stories remind us not to believe all the common stereotypes about truckers.
The second chapter is “The Ships of Port Revel “ and is about the Port Revel Shiphandling Training Centre in Saint-Pierre-de-Bressieux, France. The Center is a maritime pilotage school that trains pilots, masters, and officers on large ships like supertankers, container ships, LNG carriers and cruise ships. The facility uses manned models at a 1:25 scale on a man-made lake designed to simulate natural conditions including harbors, canals, and open seas. It was the first such facility in the world. The Centre was created in 1967 by Laboratoire Dauphinois d'Hydraulique.
The third chapter is “Tight-Assed River. “ It is about barges on the Illinois River. This is a tale of scale, really, really big barges (105 feet wide and almost 1,000 feet long) in really, really tight spots. There is a great deal of danger and the accompanying suspense involved in the precise and ballet-like manipulations carried out by the deck crew. Like truckers, bargemen can’t be put into a button-down, nine-to-five box. They come from a variety of backgrounds, cover a spectrum of personalities and do the work for many different reasons.
“Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” is the title of the fourth chapter. Unlike the first three it is not a contemporary transportation story. Rather, it is the re-enactment of a journey from the pages of history inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s first published work “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Thoreau tells the story of a trip made by him and his brother John from Concord, Massachusetts, to Hooksett, New Hampshire in 1839. McPhee re-enacts the trip with his friend Dick Kazmaier and his son-in-law Mark Svenvold. I enjoyed using Google Maps to follow along for part of the trip. It was interesting to note that many of the landmarks, creeks, bridges and promontories are just as described.
The fifth chapter “Out in the Sort” begins at Clearwater Seafood in Arichat, Nova Scotia, temporary home to a million hibernating lobsters. From Arichat the lobsters are shipped to all parts of the world. But first they go to Worldport, the UPS hub and Air Service Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Lobsters are just the opening example of what passes through the center. With its own US Customs Station for international shipments the center screens, scans and sorts everything imaginable of all sizes, weights and shapes. The mammoth building is a maze of escalators and horizontal belts that speed packages to dozens of waiting cargo planes.
“Coal Train” is the sixth chapter. It is a story of power and scale in which trains move mountains of coal from the world’s largest coal deposit at Black Thunder Mine in Wyoming. A train might be a mile and three-quarters long hauling twenty-three thousand tons of coal. There are two diesel/electric engines in the front and three at the rear. The diesels generate electricity to power the engines that actually do the pulling and pushing. There is a delicate ballet of movement and timing performed by dispatchers, trainmen, brakemen and engineers. The destination might be almost anywhere in the country where there are coal-fired plants, but for McPhee’s tale the end point is Plant Scherer. Owned by Georgia Power, at twelve thousand acres it is the largest coal-fired power plant in the Northern Hemisphere. It processes 12 million tons of coal a year from 1300 trains made up from 2,000 miles of cars.
The final chapter ofUncommon Carriers is “The Fleet of One II.” It is a return to Don Ainsworth’s tanker and serves as an epilogue to a very interesting book.
The second chapter is “The Ships of Port Revel “ and is about the Port Revel Shiphandling Training Centre in Saint-Pierre-de-Bressieux, France. The Center is a maritime pilotage school that trains pilots, masters, and officers on large ships like supertankers, container ships, LNG carriers and cruise ships. The facility uses manned models at a 1:25 scale on a man-made lake designed to simulate natural conditions including harbors, canals, and open seas. It was the first such facility in the world. The Centre was created in 1967 by Laboratoire Dauphinois d'Hydraulique.
The third chapter is “Tight-Assed River. “ It is about barges on the Illinois River. This is a tale of scale, really, really big barges (105 feet wide and almost 1,000 feet long) in really, really tight spots. There is a great deal of danger and the accompanying suspense involved in the precise and ballet-like manipulations carried out by the deck crew. Like truckers, bargemen can’t be put into a button-down, nine-to-five box. They come from a variety of backgrounds, cover a spectrum of personalities and do the work for many different reasons.
“Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” is the title of the fourth chapter. Unlike the first three it is not a contemporary transportation story. Rather, it is the re-enactment of a journey from the pages of history inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s first published work “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Thoreau tells the story of a trip made by him and his brother John from Concord, Massachusetts, to Hooksett, New Hampshire in 1839. McPhee re-enacts the trip with his friend Dick Kazmaier and his son-in-law Mark Svenvold. I enjoyed using Google Maps to follow along for part of the trip. It was interesting to note that many of the landmarks, creeks, bridges and promontories are just as described.
The fifth chapter “Out in the Sort” begins at Clearwater Seafood in Arichat, Nova Scotia, temporary home to a million hibernating lobsters. From Arichat the lobsters are shipped to all parts of the world. But first they go to Worldport, the UPS hub and Air Service Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Lobsters are just the opening example of what passes through the center. With its own US Customs Station for international shipments the center screens, scans and sorts everything imaginable of all sizes, weights and shapes. The mammoth building is a maze of escalators and horizontal belts that speed packages to dozens of waiting cargo planes.
“Coal Train” is the sixth chapter. It is a story of power and scale in which trains move mountains of coal from the world’s largest coal deposit at Black Thunder Mine in Wyoming. A train might be a mile and three-quarters long hauling twenty-three thousand tons of coal. There are two diesel/electric engines in the front and three at the rear. The diesels generate electricity to power the engines that actually do the pulling and pushing. There is a delicate ballet of movement and timing performed by dispatchers, trainmen, brakemen and engineers. The destination might be almost anywhere in the country where there are coal-fired plants, but for McPhee’s tale the end point is Plant Scherer. Owned by Georgia Power, at twelve thousand acres it is the largest coal-fired power plant in the Northern Hemisphere. It processes 12 million tons of coal a year from 1300 trains made up from 2,000 miles of cars.
The final chapter ofUncommon Carriers is “The Fleet of One II.” It is a return to Don Ainsworth’s tanker and serves as an epilogue to a very interesting book.
April 16, 2019
As someone who is interested in logistics, largely from my own personal experience, I found this book to be deeply interesting. The author clearly has some personal interest in logistics as well, and knowing a bit about the back story of this book as I do, I found a few aspects of the book to be highly interesting. For one, the author keeps a fair amount close to the vest, such as the difficulty he had in actually persuading companies that it would be a good idea to let a journalist/writer like himself on the boats to talk to the people who worked in logistics. If you look at the book, you don't get a sense of the deliberate design of his structure, or of the work it took in setting up the trips, or even the timing of the particular trips (except that there are two trips with the enjoyable truck driver who bookends the story, and it is clear which one is first and which is a follow-up trip). The amount of time it took to work on the project is unknown, and the work even manages to jump back in time and reflect on earlier writings about some of the places where the author went, all of which makes for a typically enjoyable McPhee experience.
This book consists of seven chapters that are connected essays dealing with the subject of logistics, all of them told in an earthy and humorous manner by noted writer John McPhee. The first of the essays tells of a trip that McPhee took from northern Georgia to Washington with a truck driver, where he learns about the economics and culture of truck driving, and enjoys the way that truck drivers operate, where they eat and sleep, how much they obey the rules, and so on. After that comes a visit to Port Revel, where various people from all over the world learn how to better manage ships and become better pilots. This leads to an essay on barges who travel up and down the Illinois river dealing with the riparian logistics of the greater Mississippi basin, and how much work it is to manage such a task successfully. The author spends some time following the trail of the Thoreau brothers down the Concord and Merrimack rivers and examines how much has changed today from the mid 19th century. McPhee spends some time in the sort looking at deskilling and the way that UPS has sought to profit from being a logistics company of many talents and abilities, something I have some experience with. He also goes to a coal train and sees how Wyoming coal is brought to power plants around the USA before closing with a return trip with the opening trucker, where he compares truck driving in the East and in the West.
Overall, there is a great deal to appreciate about this particular book. The author shows himself interested in logistics in a broad perspective and has enough sensitivity to sympathetically portray the various people he discusses. Whether he is dealing with single men driving trucks, or married men (and women) working on boats, or single women sorting packages for UPS, McPhee is a sympathetic viewer and listener of their daily lives and someone who is able to convey the truths of their working lives and how it affects their personal lives and how and why they work in logistics in very relatable ways. That general good nature allows these essays to shine and gives the reader a better understanding of the sort of people on whom we depend for so much that we use in our lives, most of which is brought to us through supply chains and carried in boats and on trucks and trains by logistics workers who in many ways are people not unlike ourselves. And for those of us who have personal experience in dealing with logistics, it is comforting to have these sketches of life on the rivers and seas and roads and railroads of the world where so many goods are carried for us and for our neighbors.
This book consists of seven chapters that are connected essays dealing with the subject of logistics, all of them told in an earthy and humorous manner by noted writer John McPhee. The first of the essays tells of a trip that McPhee took from northern Georgia to Washington with a truck driver, where he learns about the economics and culture of truck driving, and enjoys the way that truck drivers operate, where they eat and sleep, how much they obey the rules, and so on. After that comes a visit to Port Revel, where various people from all over the world learn how to better manage ships and become better pilots. This leads to an essay on barges who travel up and down the Illinois river dealing with the riparian logistics of the greater Mississippi basin, and how much work it is to manage such a task successfully. The author spends some time following the trail of the Thoreau brothers down the Concord and Merrimack rivers and examines how much has changed today from the mid 19th century. McPhee spends some time in the sort looking at deskilling and the way that UPS has sought to profit from being a logistics company of many talents and abilities, something I have some experience with. He also goes to a coal train and sees how Wyoming coal is brought to power plants around the USA before closing with a return trip with the opening trucker, where he compares truck driving in the East and in the West.
Overall, there is a great deal to appreciate about this particular book. The author shows himself interested in logistics in a broad perspective and has enough sensitivity to sympathetically portray the various people he discusses. Whether he is dealing with single men driving trucks, or married men (and women) working on boats, or single women sorting packages for UPS, McPhee is a sympathetic viewer and listener of their daily lives and someone who is able to convey the truths of their working lives and how it affects their personal lives and how and why they work in logistics in very relatable ways. That general good nature allows these essays to shine and gives the reader a better understanding of the sort of people on whom we depend for so much that we use in our lives, most of which is brought to us through supply chains and carried in boats and on trucks and trains by logistics workers who in many ways are people not unlike ourselves. And for those of us who have personal experience in dealing with logistics, it is comforting to have these sketches of life on the rivers and seas and roads and railroads of the world where so many goods are carried for us and for our neighbors.
July 25, 2023
This book is too short for it to have taken me over a month to read it. Why so long? Well, despite enjoying McPhee's writing overall, I found the book slightly boring. I was interested in most of the topics and late in the book I realized the problem here was he’s provided way too much information, too many details. So, maybe I wasn't quite that interested, maybe.
The first chapter, A Fleet of One, I enjoyed the most. It’s about a trucker, an owner-operator who specializes in hazardous liquid materials. He's been on the road for decades. The last chapter returned to the same trucker, although I wouldn't say it added much of anything new; and happily, was quite short compared to the other chapters. McPhee rode with him again, three years later and perhaps just had to add that into the book.
The next chapter, or essay, as it were, is called The Ships of Port Revel and is a training course for ship captains and ship pilots. They come from all over the world to train there for a week. It was somewhat interesting, and the shortest of all the essays.
The third essay, Tight-Assed River, started out okay, but went on way too long. It’s double the length of the essay before it and had many details that literally put me to sleep. Here the book really lagged for me, too much information. Oh, it’s about a barge carrying freight along the Illinois River.
The middle essay called, Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, was somewhat different than the others. Thus far, the collection is about work, mainly shipping in different formats (carriers). This one instead has the author and his son-in-law retracing the journey that Henry David Thoreau and his brother took many years before, which was recounted in HDT’s first book with a very similar name. While I mainly enjoyed this essay, the comparison from then and now (being 2003), it doesn’t fit with the theme the other essays.
The next essay didn’t fit well either, called Out in the Sort. It’s about a company that ships fresh lobster all around the world, the largest lobster company. Then it morphs into what UPS, United Parcel Service, can do for you. One could say a meandering essay, and perhaps covers shipping via airplane.
Then we have Coal Train, which is about what it says, about shipping coal via train. This essay is the longest and by far could have been cut in half. It went on for too many pages, with too many details, that maybe a train buff, train spotter, what-have you would enjoy, or not.
Then the last I’ve already mentioned. This book has not put me off of McPhee’s writing, but it may be a while before I jump into another collection of his essays.
The first chapter, A Fleet of One, I enjoyed the most. It’s about a trucker, an owner-operator who specializes in hazardous liquid materials. He's been on the road for decades. The last chapter returned to the same trucker, although I wouldn't say it added much of anything new; and happily, was quite short compared to the other chapters. McPhee rode with him again, three years later and perhaps just had to add that into the book.
The next chapter, or essay, as it were, is called The Ships of Port Revel and is a training course for ship captains and ship pilots. They come from all over the world to train there for a week. It was somewhat interesting, and the shortest of all the essays.
The third essay, Tight-Assed River, started out okay, but went on way too long. It’s double the length of the essay before it and had many details that literally put me to sleep. Here the book really lagged for me, too much information. Oh, it’s about a barge carrying freight along the Illinois River.
The middle essay called, Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, was somewhat different than the others. Thus far, the collection is about work, mainly shipping in different formats (carriers). This one instead has the author and his son-in-law retracing the journey that Henry David Thoreau and his brother took many years before, which was recounted in HDT’s first book with a very similar name. While I mainly enjoyed this essay, the comparison from then and now (being 2003), it doesn’t fit with the theme the other essays.
The next essay didn’t fit well either, called Out in the Sort. It’s about a company that ships fresh lobster all around the world, the largest lobster company. Then it morphs into what UPS, United Parcel Service, can do for you. One could say a meandering essay, and perhaps covers shipping via airplane.
Then we have Coal Train, which is about what it says, about shipping coal via train. This essay is the longest and by far could have been cut in half. It went on for too many pages, with too many details, that maybe a train buff, train spotter, what-have you would enjoy, or not.
Then the last I’ve already mentioned. This book has not put me off of McPhee’s writing, but it may be a while before I jump into another collection of his essays.
September 22, 2020
[In my ratings 2 means quite OK and 3 means good.]
These essays include some of my very favorite McPhee writing. Out in the Sort and Coal Train are remarkable. As is his signature, he sees and conveys what is fascinating and remarkable in often common activities. Or sometimes not so common, as the Ships of Port Ravel. The account of his canoe trip is unique among the chapters in failing miserably to reach his extraordinary standards of succinctness and insight, though my plebian inability to appreciate Thoreau despite kindred values may be partly to blame for my judgment. One gets the sense that he never established a strong personal connection with the barge crew, which may say a lot about the crew since McPhee's ability and generosity in doing so usually as strong as Walter Cronkite's.
A cost of McPhee's welcome personalism is occasional irritation with him. There was nothing kind among the multiple references to his wife. Mostly I chafed at his eastern establishment condescension toward Don Ainsworth in two chapters otherwise on par with Coal Train. The line in reporting is fine, but "Was I aware…? (I wasn't. It doesn't)" is one of a dozen times that to my opinion falls on the guilty side. The other side of moments of irritation is connection with a sense across several books that he has become an honored familiar . From his love of fishing, for example, "[j]ust as the body of a fish tells you how that fish makes a living, the body of a tanker can tell you what it contains."
The writing is fast-paced because it is so tight. If you've read McPhee you already know that the consistency of specificity and care, from structure to phrasing to brilliant choice of individual words, is more remarkable even than individual instances. But here are a couple delights from the first chapter: "'If the cargo starts to spill or all hell breaks loose, turn that stopcock…' All hell stayed put, to the relief of the part-owner" [himself]. "'Screw Machine Engineering', a magazine whose name a hyphen would have improved …" Or the first sentence, "[t]he little four-wheelers live on risk." "Typically we had lunch eight hours after breakfast" captures in a sentence what most of us would belabor for a paragraph.
As usual with McPhee, tote your dictionary. Ullage is the amount by which a container falls short of being full.
These essays include some of my very favorite McPhee writing. Out in the Sort and Coal Train are remarkable. As is his signature, he sees and conveys what is fascinating and remarkable in often common activities. Or sometimes not so common, as the Ships of Port Ravel. The account of his canoe trip is unique among the chapters in failing miserably to reach his extraordinary standards of succinctness and insight, though my plebian inability to appreciate Thoreau despite kindred values may be partly to blame for my judgment. One gets the sense that he never established a strong personal connection with the barge crew, which may say a lot about the crew since McPhee's ability and generosity in doing so usually as strong as Walter Cronkite's.
A cost of McPhee's welcome personalism is occasional irritation with him. There was nothing kind among the multiple references to his wife. Mostly I chafed at his eastern establishment condescension toward Don Ainsworth in two chapters otherwise on par with Coal Train. The line in reporting is fine, but "Was I aware…? (I wasn't. It doesn't)" is one of a dozen times that to my opinion falls on the guilty side. The other side of moments of irritation is connection with a sense across several books that he has become an honored familiar . From his love of fishing, for example, "[j]ust as the body of a fish tells you how that fish makes a living, the body of a tanker can tell you what it contains."
The writing is fast-paced because it is so tight. If you've read McPhee you already know that the consistency of specificity and care, from structure to phrasing to brilliant choice of individual words, is more remarkable even than individual instances. But here are a couple delights from the first chapter: "'If the cargo starts to spill or all hell breaks loose, turn that stopcock…' All hell stayed put, to the relief of the part-owner" [himself]. "'Screw Machine Engineering', a magazine whose name a hyphen would have improved …" Or the first sentence, "[t]he little four-wheelers live on risk." "Typically we had lunch eight hours after breakfast" captures in a sentence what most of us would belabor for a paragraph.
As usual with McPhee, tote your dictionary. Ullage is the amount by which a container falls short of being full.
March 28, 2022
This book was fine.
The author gives us the background on various transport occupations. Great non fiction can leave you feeling as if you could really empathize with a doer of that job. You can feel what it’s like to be them, imagine how they spend their leisure time, what they think of their neighbors. Or great nonfiction can leave you with some deep understanding of how an aspect of society operates by internal rules that are completely unintelligible to your years on this planet. And you can walk away newly alive to the complexity and beauty of this place.
This book never quite achieves either. It approaches something great once, describing Don Aimsworths life as a long range trucker. You approach an understanding of why someone would choose to spend their life driving around the country. At least for this particular individual. There’s a sort of freedom that Don achieves in his solitude. And the more you know Don, the less you can imagine him without that freedom.
Butt otherwise the book falls into descriptions that veer off into tangents sorta like if you had to read a Wikipedia article and click every hyperlinked word along the way.
I don’t regret reading it and thought the chapters on UPS/lobsters and the one on inland barges were interesting enough.
I found it kind of annoying to read, at times. The author wields analogies like a cudgel. They don’t much help you better understand the concept or image being conveyed, but they do remind you that the author knows a lot of obscure things. Here’s an example: “if you were left alone there you would need a compass no less than if you were dropped into the Gabon between Makokou and Mekambo.” The author is deceiving a UPS sortation center that is large.
The point of this analogy seems to be that it’s hard to navigate this particular sortation center.
It’s a fine skim.
Three stars
The author gives us the background on various transport occupations. Great non fiction can leave you feeling as if you could really empathize with a doer of that job. You can feel what it’s like to be them, imagine how they spend their leisure time, what they think of their neighbors. Or great nonfiction can leave you with some deep understanding of how an aspect of society operates by internal rules that are completely unintelligible to your years on this planet. And you can walk away newly alive to the complexity and beauty of this place.
This book never quite achieves either. It approaches something great once, describing Don Aimsworths life as a long range trucker. You approach an understanding of why someone would choose to spend their life driving around the country. At least for this particular individual. There’s a sort of freedom that Don achieves in his solitude. And the more you know Don, the less you can imagine him without that freedom.
Butt otherwise the book falls into descriptions that veer off into tangents sorta like if you had to read a Wikipedia article and click every hyperlinked word along the way.
I don’t regret reading it and thought the chapters on UPS/lobsters and the one on inland barges were interesting enough.
I found it kind of annoying to read, at times. The author wields analogies like a cudgel. They don’t much help you better understand the concept or image being conveyed, but they do remind you that the author knows a lot of obscure things. Here’s an example: “if you were left alone there you would need a compass no less than if you were dropped into the Gabon between Makokou and Mekambo.” The author is deceiving a UPS sortation center that is large.
The point of this analogy seems to be that it’s hard to navigate this particular sortation center.
It’s a fine skim.
Three stars
February 8, 2020
Uncommon Carriers is a bit of an odd book to reviews. Made up of a series of vignettes, there isn't so much an overarching thesis or argument to summarize. Rather, it's a set of unvarnished portraits of people in roles we often overlook: driving eighteen wheelers, learning to command ships, running coal trains up and down the tracks, and so on.
I liked the book for two reasons. First, McPhee is really excellent at humanizing those who he encounters. We're presented with a series of characters working in each industry who are never mocked, but are also never presented as perfect or polished. McPhee is careful never to look down upon these workers, instead revealing the complexity and importance of the work they do. We leave each chapter with a greater appreciation of all that goes into running a barge up and down a river, and never once feeling like those who do it are 'less than.' At the same time, though, McPhee never dresses up the characters to improve their appearances either: they're presented with faults and messiness, with inaccurate views and odd habits. In other words, McPhee is exceptional at capturing the nuance, complexity, and humanity of those with whom he interacts.
The second thing I enjoy is the length. I found the last McPhee book (Coming Into The Country) I read to be a little on the long, plodding side. By contrast, though, this McPhee is really delightfully paced: we're given rich stories about each sector and character without it dragging on or losing interest. Indeed, it's a relatively quick, engaging, and interesting book - easily read in a couple of days.
In other words, it's McPhee worth reading by all. Come for the curious professions and stay for the vivid, warm, and honest portrayal of characters you meet along the way.
I liked the book for two reasons. First, McPhee is really excellent at humanizing those who he encounters. We're presented with a series of characters working in each industry who are never mocked, but are also never presented as perfect or polished. McPhee is careful never to look down upon these workers, instead revealing the complexity and importance of the work they do. We leave each chapter with a greater appreciation of all that goes into running a barge up and down a river, and never once feeling like those who do it are 'less than.' At the same time, though, McPhee never dresses up the characters to improve their appearances either: they're presented with faults and messiness, with inaccurate views and odd habits. In other words, McPhee is exceptional at capturing the nuance, complexity, and humanity of those with whom he interacts.
The second thing I enjoy is the length. I found the last McPhee book (Coming Into The Country) I read to be a little on the long, plodding side. By contrast, though, this McPhee is really delightfully paced: we're given rich stories about each sector and character without it dragging on or losing interest. Indeed, it's a relatively quick, engaging, and interesting book - easily read in a couple of days.
In other words, it's McPhee worth reading by all. Come for the curious professions and stay for the vivid, warm, and honest portrayal of characters you meet along the way.
March 30, 2024
It seemed like a quirky subject for a book but I thought I'd try it. Author John McPhee reports on his travels in the USA on various modes of transportation. He finds himself in an eighteen-wheel chemical tanker with hazmat materials inside, a towboat pushing a triple load of barges up the Illinois River and in the cabs of 150-car long coal trains traversing Nebraska and Wyoming. He also spends time inside a major hub for UPS with four million square feet of floor space at the Louisville Airport located between parallel runways just to see how zillions of packages are correctly routed into trucks and planes. Oh, and he follows the path of Henry David Thoreau & his brother John down the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in a sixteen-foot canoe. The craziest "trip" was at a lake in French Alps where--for $15,000 per week--captains of huge ocean going liners "practice" with twenty-foot scale models for any eventuality that might occur on the high seas.
In the course of these travels, the author weaves a lot of local history into his travels along with a great deal of humor and insight. This book is a fascinating ride (pun intended) into worlds that the average American never visits.
In the course of these travels, the author weaves a lot of local history into his travels along with a great deal of humor and insight. This book is a fascinating ride (pun intended) into worlds that the average American never visits.
January 27, 2022
It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down with McPhee, and while I haven’t lost my awe, I’d forgotten its depth. This guy is just an exquisite writer who has managed every journalist’s dream of being free to follow whatever tickles your curiosity and, if you’re half as good as he is, to create minor masterpieces such as these, about … the various ways and means used to haul freight in the US. Yeah, really. Really!
McPhee is an old fart—older than me! — and he clearly is still (2006) more comfortable in the world of men, although he dutifully notes the numbers of women freight train engineers (two) in the region he’s writing about, as well as the numbers of women truckers, women captaining the big tugs tied into multiple barges going up and down the Illinois River, etc. But I’m guessing those stats may have been hunted down and sifted in by an editor’s assistant.
But there are stories out there about women breaking into these enclaves and slowly changing the cultures for the better. Those are good reading too. But McPhee is telling the stories he wants to tell and he tells them beautifully.
McPhee is an old fart—older than me! — and he clearly is still (2006) more comfortable in the world of men, although he dutifully notes the numbers of women freight train engineers (two) in the region he’s writing about, as well as the numbers of women truckers, women captaining the big tugs tied into multiple barges going up and down the Illinois River, etc. But I’m guessing those stats may have been hunted down and sifted in by an editor’s assistant.
But there are stories out there about women breaking into these enclaves and slowly changing the cultures for the better. Those are good reading too. But McPhee is telling the stories he wants to tell and he tells them beautifully.
November 6, 2018
Uncommon Carriers is a mish mash of essays loosely centered around the theme of transportation. McPhee conducted his research by traveling with a long haul trucker carrying chemicals across the U.S. Serving as a passenger on a barge operation traveling up the Illinois River. Participating in a canoe trip up the Merrimack River, while musing on the writing of Henry David Thoreau. Touring a UPS distribution center in Louisville, Kentucky. And riding a coal train through the Midwest.
Though I’ve read several of his books, I have to confess that I’m no fan of John McPhee’s writing. There’s nothing wrong with it, but for me it just lays there … flat words on a flat page organized into flat prose transmitting flat thoughts. Unfortunately, Uncommon Carriers did nothing to disabuse me of this impression. Whether he’s reading road signs, or text on baseball caps, or just recounting stuff he sees outside the window, there’s seemingly nothing too banal for McPhee to include in the text.
Meh.
Though I’ve read several of his books, I have to confess that I’m no fan of John McPhee’s writing. There’s nothing wrong with it, but for me it just lays there … flat words on a flat page organized into flat prose transmitting flat thoughts. Unfortunately, Uncommon Carriers did nothing to disabuse me of this impression. Whether he’s reading road signs, or text on baseball caps, or just recounting stuff he sees outside the window, there’s seemingly nothing too banal for McPhee to include in the text.
Meh.
December 3, 2019
"The deckhands of the forward watch are straining at their cheater bars, revolving the ratchets that tighten the cruciate interbarge wires which are strung horizontally among timberheads and cavels, and in most places are only a couple of inches above the decks and gunwales of the barges." And on that mind-numbing sentence I finally gave up on "Uncommon Carriers" by John McPhee. This was on page 78 and followed many similar incomprehensible sentences and, considering there were about 170 pages to go, warned that more, many more would follow. And let's face it, I'm dumb. The book was like a "60 Minutes" broadcast, without the pictures, of vehicles that carry commercial items from here to there. McPhee is a highly respected writer whom, I believe, won a Pulitzer Prize somewhere along the way. So don't let my ignorance and short attention span deter you from reading this. But if you're looking for a good racy novel, well, I guess you've been uncommonly carried to the wrong book.
November 12, 2021
DNF
I couldn't finish this book. It's not a bad book. My problem with is a combination of me not being in the right reading mood for this type of book, and the author not touching upon the sort of insights I look for in a book like this.
Each "job" story (I completed the first two) focused on describing the work itself, the general lifestyle the job creates for people who work it, and a mini-dive into one or more specific people doing that job. To accomplish this, the author rode along with people while they performed these jobs, apparently for days and weeks at a time.
I found the surface biographies of each worker to be insufficient and unsatisfying. The descriptions of the jobs went too deep when I didn't care, and barely touched aspects that interested me. Again, this is probably more about what I wanted in the book not matching what the book is, and not really a failing of the book.
In the end, I'm not the right reader for this book. I'm cutting this one loose.
I couldn't finish this book. It's not a bad book. My problem with is a combination of me not being in the right reading mood for this type of book, and the author not touching upon the sort of insights I look for in a book like this.
Each "job" story (I completed the first two) focused on describing the work itself, the general lifestyle the job creates for people who work it, and a mini-dive into one or more specific people doing that job. To accomplish this, the author rode along with people while they performed these jobs, apparently for days and weeks at a time.
I found the surface biographies of each worker to be insufficient and unsatisfying. The descriptions of the jobs went too deep when I didn't care, and barely touched aspects that interested me. Again, this is probably more about what I wanted in the book not matching what the book is, and not really a failing of the book.
In the end, I'm not the right reader for this book. I'm cutting this one loose.
June 16, 2017
Another McPhee winner, as he takes you aboard 18-wheelers, canal ferries and other thrillrides you may not have experienced. His writing is focused and to the point, provides history and background as well as a very personal view of the author's hands-on (being there!) experience. Read it and watch the mondo trucks rumbling by and then consider what it might be like downshifting as you negotiate your 80,000 lb load swishing about in the big metal cylinder a few feet behind you.
And learn what it costs to wash out it's insides when your load is delivered.
In other hands this could be discordant but in McPhee's, it's heart-stopping adventure and well-told reporting with lessons about that with which we should all be familiar.
And learn what it costs to wash out it's insides when your load is delivered.
In other hands this could be discordant but in McPhee's, it's heart-stopping adventure and well-told reporting with lessons about that with which we should all be familiar.
January 25, 2018
John McPhee is known for his "creative nonfiction" works. This is my first McPhee work to read, and I must say I enjoyed it immensely. He rides across America in an 80,000-lb tanker 18-wheeler. He crisscrosses the Midwest on coal trains coming out of Nebraska. He visits a scale model ship handling training lake in the French Alps. He explores the humongous UPS hub at the Louisville airport. He retraces the canoe trip of Thoreau and his brother up the Merrimack River (okay, that last chapter was really boring--but the rest were great).
As someone who enjoys travel, solitude, and administrative logistics, this book was right down my alley. I doubt I will be trading in my keyboard for a big rig anytime soon, but it's nice to know the option's out there . . .
As someone who enjoys travel, solitude, and administrative logistics, this book was right down my alley. I doubt I will be trading in my keyboard for a big rig anytime soon, but it's nice to know the option's out there . . .
Displaying 1 - 29 of 264 reviews