The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

by Benjamin Lorr

Lynne estimates she grossed $200,000 last year—that is a rough calculation based on miles driven—but that she took home less than $17,000. This for a fourteen-year veteran trucker who knows her industry inside and out. Who participates on trucking blogs, mentors younger truckers about the snares and scams. Who lives in her truck and stays out on the road three weeks at a time. Who works more than seventy hours the week I am with her, much of it spent in a state of a constant vigilance, where she sleeps in four to five hour bursts, and wakes up for three thirty a.m. appointments that are make-or-break for her career, but ignored by the distribution center on the other side. Who didn’t see her mother for two years because she didn’t have the time off and couldn’t get loads that lined up with her mother’s location. The $17,000 also—based on my experience with her—is a number likely inflated by pride. The week I’m with her, Lynne receives a weekly paycheck for just $100. Which is what she received the week before. And the week before that. “It’s in my contract,” she tells me. “No matter how many expenses I have, I always have the right to a check for one hundred dollars. So that is what I usually get . . . I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing how to stretch it.”