Uncommon Carriers

Ever wonder what it's like to drive a tanker full of WD-40, park a container ship, UPS a lobster from Canada to Montana, load up a mile long coal train? I certainly have and so John McPhee's Uncommon Carriers is right up my alley. It's a fascinating look at one small slice of the inner workings of the world that we all rely on but very few people actually understand. The chapter on UPS operations hub in Louisville is the both the most well written and interesting. The scale of the operation is unimaginably huge but McPhee does a good job of putting the reader in the midst of things. Who knew UPS has a warehouse full of every last Bentely part, its employees fix laptops you think are going to the manufacturer, endowed a college? Every chapter is fascinating in its own way. Seeing the freight trains go by in my neighborhood made me particularly interested in the section on coal trains which included a lot of information pertaining to freight trains in general. Sometimes McPhee's writing tends to wonder and jumps around the time continuum a bit which I found confusing. There was one incongruous chapter on a canoe ride up the Merrimack river which would have been better inserted into one of his other books. Each chapter stands on its own as an essay, and I actually read a couple other books at the same time as this one. I imagine McPhee had a grand time riding trains, boats and trucks while doing the research. It's a short enough read to never get boring, yet detailed enough to put the reader in the heart of the action. Truly a fascinating collection I would recommend to just about everybody!