Uncommon Carriers

Uncommon Carriers

book data

247 ratings, 3.79 average rating, 62 reviews (more data...)

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published

May 16th 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

binding

Hardcover, 256 pages

isbn

0374280398 (isbn13: 9780374280390)

description

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. ...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 364)

All ratings | 5 stars (46) | 4 stars (124) | 3 stars (58) | 2 stars (16) | 1 star (3) | avg 3.79

all | this edition

Howard

Howard rated it:

08/31/07

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 ordinan...more

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Espen

Espen rated it:

(review of isbn 0865477396)

12/16/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: anyone

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 tryin...more

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Ron

Ron rated it:

09/29/08

Read in September, 2008

The breadth of John McPhee's notice and interest over the last 40+ years of writing on various "real world" topics is impressive, to use an inadequate term. He has written about oranges, merchant seamanship, urban farmers markets, Bill Bradley when he was an All-American basketball player at Princeton, and Alaska's people, geography, and geology, to name just a few of his subjects.

McPhee is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and many of his books have grown out of pieces originall...more

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Stef

Stef rated it:

03/02/08

bookshelves: audiobook, nonfiction

Read in February, 2008

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, but it doesn't seem to have an ISBN.

I read this as part of my quest to understand how everything is connected to everything else, and how it is economically feasible to create very inexpensive products by shipping materials all over the world. It's a set of essays mostly about shipping modalities, but each essay goes at the subject from a different angle (or several angles).

The book doesn't really answer the "how can things be so ...more

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Sally

Sally rated it:

02/15/08

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Sally by: jane
recommends it for: you!

i like john mcphee's writing in general, even though it can be heavy on facts - you know, facts, hoo boy! the first piece is about cross country trucking, interesting in itself much to my surprise, but also because some places mentioned are the same as what carol and i saw in october. i do love it if it's about ME, even peripherally. the second piece is about the ship handling school near grenoble to which both of my brothers went 20+ years ago, so almost about ME. kind of. the third piece ab...more

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Hannah

Hannah rated it:

12/27/07

Read in January, 2007

I wouldn't characterize this as a badly written book overall, but I will say that I lost interest at many points in the narrative. The book follows his journeys with various freight carriers, such as a chemical tanker, a tow boat on the Illinois River, coal trains in and around Wyoming, truckloads and then plane-loads of lobsters from Canada, and least interestingly (to me) a canoe in New England, tracing a route taken by Thoreau.

I found the parts about trucking to be very enlightening (I w...more I wouldn't characterize this as a badly written book overall, but I will say that I lost interest at many points in the narrative. The book follows his journeys with various freight carriers, such as a chemical tanker, a tow boat on the Illinois River, coal trains in and around Wyoming, truckloads and then plane-loads of lobsters from Canada, and least interestingly (to me) a canoe in New England, tracing a route taken by Thoreau.

I found the parts about trucking to be very enlightening (I will be sure to remember them on my next roadtrip), and the truck driver that McPhee rode along with was quite a character. Also, the daily function of the Union Pacific railroad was pretty fascinating. I had never really thought about what would happen if you were driving a 1.5 mile long train up and then down a peak. Even though the grades for trains that length are never steep, the idea of having to put the brakes on the front of the train, while accelerating the rear is pretty terrifying.

Then there was a chapter about people learning how to maneuver large ships in a scale model of the ocean, on scaled down ships, even with scaled down people on the docks, in the middle of the French Alps, which SOUNDS like a fun read but for me was very boring. I also could have done without the chapter about tow-boating, although that also sounds like a very challenging trade, and the idea of constantly moving and having smaller boats deliver meals and things to you en route was pretty cool.

By far the least interesting to me was the Thoreau chapter. Although it appears that the river being navigated in the canoe was (is?) used for freight, neither the author's trip nor Thoreau's were actually for this purpose. I see it as a very narcissistic essay that McPhee decided to throw into the book because he is a Thoreau fan and thought it was cool that he'd taken the same boat trip as his idol. Not surprisingly, to those of us reading the book to learn more about the way freight moves around the world and the people who move it, this was not as cool as he had thought it would be.

My favorite section began by following thousands of lobsters on their journey from cold-water holding tanks in Nova Scotia to restaurants all over the world, via UPS headquarters in Kentucky. The descriptions of the UPS hub in Louisville are amazing. It sounds like some enormous hotwheels track, with packages whirling about and being directed by computers and sometimes college students. Even more interesting was the revelation that UPS has its own college program and helps students attend if they work at this hub. Although all the people McPhee interviewed seemed to think this was a great deal, to me it sounded exhausting. In order to attend class during the day, one would need to work at night, with sometimes only three hours of sleep, and all this for $8 per hour. I suppose to alot of people this is still a good deal, and particularly outside of California, where one could actually make use of such a salary, but I'm not sure I would be able to cope. Anyhow, as it turns out, in addition to shipping things and educating people, UPS also stores parts for all kinds of products, including Bentleys and Rolls Royces, manages the inventory and shipping for companies such as the one that makes baseball bats for the Major League, AND actually repairs and services many products, including Toshiba computers! That's right, if you own a Toshiba and it needs fixing, somebody at UPS will probably fix it for you, and then send it right back! Who knew?

Ultimately, although I cannot call John McPhee a poor writer, this book is definitely all over the place, and not well organized. Essay by essay, each one has its merit, but I am not sure they belong in a collection like this. I can say for sure that by the end of this year, this book will be closer to the bottom of my list than the top....less

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Joe

Joe rated it:

11/14/07

Read in October, 2007

much of this collection of several essays is what i could call excruciatingly educational, that is, the topics are ones you could hardly imagine ever studying (the details of how to guide a barge of the ohio river?), especially in this much detail, and yet, with mcphee as your guide, it becomes downright interesting.

some sections tho glow with their own light. the essay centered on the UPS package distribution hub (called "out in the sort") should have wide appeal due if nothing e...more

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Nicki

Nicki added it

12/30/07

When McPhee writes about the freight industry, he isn t talking about the logistics behind UPS, or the hassles suffered by passengers at the mercy of an out-gunned airline industry. He is talking about the really big stuff: trucks with at least 18 wheels. People who captain ocean-going tankers that take more than an hour to come to a full stop. Pilots who fly the massive cargo planes over oceans and that will never show an in-flight movie. He rides on freight trains that race across the plains ...more

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Clifton

Clifton rated it:

10/02/08

Read in September, 2008

How much do you know about the army of 18-wheelers thundering down every American highway at all hours of the day and night? How much thought do you give to your ability to select a live New Brunswick lobster at any seafood restaurant in Oklahoma?

Great nonfiction illuminates the unseen, unnoticed world surrounding us. Uncommon Carriers begins and ends with a trip in an 18-wheeler, and in between travels by rail, tug and plane. In this collection of shortish essays, John McPhee takes us in...more

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Seth

Seth rated it:

08/22/08

bookshelves: st-marks-student-summer-reading

Read in August, 2008

I both really liked and was pretty disappointed by this book. On the up side, it has some fascinating essays by John McPhee on transportation, the environment and the economy. On the down side, it turns out that I've read every single one of these essays in the New Yorker, and the addition of his retracing of the Thoreau brothers' excursion up the New England waterways (which I found kind of mind-numbing the first time I read it: perfectly ...more

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Janet

Janet rated it:

04/05/08

bookshelves: decent-read

Read in March, 2008

Once again, John McPhee takes a subject--in this case, commerce transportation in the U.S.--and waxes both poetical/lyrical and erudite/dull. McPhee writes about traveling with a long-haul, hazardous materials trucker, cruising up the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers on barges, and sitting at a standstill on the wide open plains of the Midwest in Union Pacific train engines.

As always, his writing is vivid and it's easy to picture the people (really, characters) and places he's describing. An...more

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Adam

Adam rated it:

11/01/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in October, 2007

a really interesting look at the lives of people we don't often interact with. there were real nuggets. like the section one about Dan Ainsworth, chemical tanker driver. after reading the omnivore's dillemna, i particularly liked reading about UPS and its globalized methods of shipping one box, before 9/11, from one floor on the world trade center to UPS's central shipping facility, in kentucky, back to a different floor in the world trade center. the people in this book are heroic people with a...more

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Craig

Craig rated it:

11/30/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

This author, John McPhee, has pretty cool articles in The New Yorker.
Based on those articles he has expanded them into a book.
McPhee travels with truck drivers, barge captains, Train Engineers and more, to write about everything involved in how products and resourses make their way to their destinations.
Who new how much stuff you have to learn to be a truck driver or how complicated it is to navigate a barge down the Illinois or Mississippi rivers?
It's a very interesting read and entert...more

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Jeremy

Jeremy rated it:

07/16/08

bookshelves: nonfiction

Read in July, 2008

John McPhee always starts and ends his stories in the middle. You have to work to follow him, but the wonderful thing is that it doesn't feel like work. It feels like you're sitting next to him in the cab of a coal train listening in as he banters with the engineer, and that if you pay attention, you'll get the inside jokes they're trading.

"Uncommon Carriers" in particular is great fun, filled with big trucks, big trains and big ships. This is a book about freight transportation, a...more

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Gregory

Gregory rated it:

08/26/08

Read in August, 2008

Readers have strong reactions to McPhee. I'm in the "love" camp. The theme that holds together this collection of essays is large-scale shipping. There's a piece on tugging 30,000 tons of barge up the Illinois river, another on coal trains that stretch to over a mile long. When cresting a hill, the train must simultaneously brake in the front and apply power in the rear, lest a coupling give way. An essay in two parts about a long-haul tanker trunk opens and closes the collection. McPh...more

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Tracey

Tracey rated it:

11/17/07

bookshelves: libraryread

Read in December, 2006

McPhee accompanies various transportation specialists in their work - long distance truck hauling, barges up the Ohio river and coal trains stretching across the Plains. He and his brother recreate a boat trip of Thoreau through various streams of New England, and he spends time at probably the most expensive remote control boat clinic in the world, where supertanker skippers learn their trade.

The "tag" over the UPC code on the cover reads "Transportation/Literature" and ...more

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Linda

Linda rated it:

08/07/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: fans of creative non-fiction

John McPhee could make dust interesting! Well, even a lesser author could have done all right with this idea. He takes several surprising journeys: across country in an 18-wheeler, to ship-handling school in the French Alps, on the Illinois river on a tugboat, on the same canoe trip that Henry David Thoreau and his brother completed almost a century before; and to the "big sort" run by Federal Express. What captured me especially is the connection between geography and humanity in this...more

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James

James rated it:

11/14/07

Read in October, 2007

This was great! I have a thing where I think most books that have come out recently should be more of pamphlet length than epic tome. That most nonfiction books have a premise that would make for an outstanding lengthy magazine article, but just disintegrate when bloated to book length.

Well, I hadn't read any McPhee before, and luckily this book is fairly short, and he seems to cover each section in just the right length. Loads of tidbits of things to learn, and so many aspects of our civ...more

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Joseph

Joseph added it

06/29/08

Read in June, 2008

I could read John McPhee's writing about cross-country trucking and package sorting forever. It's fascinating the kind of careers that exist in the shadows of capitalist expediency, and the lives that grow symbiotically with those careers. For instance, Ainsworth, the trucker profiled in the first and last chapters of the book, [SPOILER ALERT:] rereads Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy once a year if I remember right, something that I've sort of been doing myself. Such a thing is made possible...more

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Tom

Tom rated it:

01/28/08

Read in August, 2007

McPhee joins unusual cargo carriers as they transport huge quantities of goods from one point to another.

He travels with a long-haul trucker delivering dangerous chemicals, hitches a ride on a mile-long coal train, lives aboard a river towboat that's longer than the Titanic, and spends time writing about other transportation oddities.

Though his stream of consciousness style sometimes tires the eye, McPhee's essays are engrossing, and his ability to quickly capture the essence of the re...more

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