The Long Haul Quotes

“Books are completely disappearing. Remember in Fahrenheit 451 where the fireman's wife was addicted to interactive television and they sent fireman crews out to burn books? That mission has been largely accomplished in middle-class America and they didn't need the firemen. The interactive electronics took care of it without the violence,”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“It’s too late now. The game’s been won by companies who don’t two shits about community character or decent jobs. Congratufuckinglations, America! We did the deal. Now we’ve got an unlimited supply of cheap commodities and unhealthy food and crumbling downtowns, no sense of place, and a permanent under class. Yay. The underclass isn’t relegated to urban ghettos either. It’s coast to coast and especially in between. Take US 50 west from Kansas City to Sacramento or US 6 from Chicago to California and you’ll see a couple thousand miles of corn, soybeans, and terminally ill towns. It looks like a scene from The Walking Dead. If there’s such a thing as the American Heartland, it has a stake through it.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“This is one of the sweet spots where, as anyone who has done repetitive manual labor understands, the single minded focus, concentration, and hard physical work combine to form a sort of temporary nirvana.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Just because someone doesn’t have a grasp of English doesn’t mean they don’t have a grasp on disparagement.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Dehumanizing service workers looks to me to be mostly about insecurity”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Regardless of psychological gymnastics, we know what we see, and many of us learn from it. It’s a rare mover who becomes a collector of anything. Even rarer is a mover who gets hung up on the “sentimental value” of objects. After more than three thousand moves I know that everyone has almost the exact same stuff and I certainly know where it’s all going to end up. It’s going to end up in a yard sale or in a dumpster. It might take a generation, though usually not, but Aunt Tillie’s sewing machine is getting tossed. So is your high school yearbook and grandma’s needlepoint doily of the Eiffel Tower. Most people save the kids kindergarten drawings and the IKEA bookcases. After the basement and attic are full it’s off to a mini-storage to put aside more useless stuff. A decade or three down the road when the estate is settled and nobody wants to pay the storage fees anymore, off it all will go into the ether. This is not anecdotal. I know because I’m the guy who puts it all into the dumpster.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Whispering Pines, Palmetto Groves, Majestic Manor, Golden Gables, Century Village, Martin Downs, Sunburn Acres, Twin Beavers, or Sunset Farts. Who gives a shit? It’s the same old Florida crap. However these places get named, rest assured, the more lyrical the moniker, the more of a sunblasted, cookie-cutter nightmare the place will be.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Just when a jaundiced view of humanity was about to infect my soul with cynicism and resentment, fate dealt me the opposite hand to mess yet again with my worldview. The contrasts I regularly deal with would be so much more fun if I could just learn to roll with them”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“It’s too late now. The game’s been won by companies who don’t give two shits about community character or decent jobs. Congratufuckinglations, America! We did the deal. Now we’ve got an unlimited supply of cheap commodities and unhealthy food and crumbling downtowns, no sense of place, and a permanent under class. Yay. The underclass isn’t relegated to urban ghettos either. It’s coast to coast and especially in between. Take US 50 west from Kansas City to Sacramento or US 6 from Chicago to California and you’ll see a couple thousand miles of corn, soybeans, and terminally ill towns. It looks like a scene from The Walking Dead. If there’s such a thing as the American Heartland, it has a stake through it.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“A pawnshop is a ruthless indicator of flawed financial planning. When”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“This did not go unnoticed by a large group of black men who flocked to the industry in the 1960s as long-haul drivers. North American Van Lines was proudly nicknamed North African Van Lines because it had so many”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“laborer, wallowing in the refuse-laden cesspit that constitutes the dregs of the American Dream is more dependable, works harder, and is more trustworthy than many native-born”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“My crews always have name tags attached to their shirts. (People with names get treated better.)”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Veteran movers never wear jeans. Jeans are too heavy and the heavy sweating that comes with the job causes chafing. Also, jeans have rivets on the seams and require a belt. Either one can scratch furniture or walls”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“moving industry is less like a leviathan and more like the Lebanese parliament. Each faction is vainly striving to achieve hegemony over its neighbors in an endless sequence of shifting alliances, treachery, and occasional benevolence.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“I’m a careful mover. I respect people’s stuff, but shit happens. You know why? Because you’re moving it. Leave the piano in the living room for three generations. It will be fine. You want to put it somewhere else, guess what? You’re taking a risk. Did you ever move your leg the wrong way and spend two weeks in a brace? Ever drop a cell phone in a toilet? Ever move a sofa to vacuum underneath and put a scratch on the floor? Most of us have done at least one of those things. I’ve done all those things. What I don’t understand is why, when a mover scratches a floor or dents a lampshade, it’s a justification for a ferocious freak-out at the entire industry.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“People go crazy when something happens to their stuff. The reaction, it appears to me, is generally overblown and not commensurate with the perceived offense.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“pawnshop is a ruthless indicator of flawed financial planning.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“the typical economic support system for an American military town. That means pawn shops, secondhand car dealers, pawn shops, secondhand furniture dealers, secondhand clothing stores, pawn shops, gun stores, all-you-can-eat cafeterias, and, oh God, how could I forget, mobile homes and prefab home sales. Then you”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“These folks were from a far different cultural mileu than any Irish peasant and going it alone out in the Wild West. Reminds me of some of the Chinese. You can go into the furthest reaches of, say, Montana or northwest Ontario and find some little dusty town with a hitching post and a church, and there will be the Chinese restaurant.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“large shower room with six spigots, like in high school, and there was a coin slot next to each spigot. You put in a quarter and that bought you five minutes’ worth of hot water. If you wanted more, you put in more money. Where was I supposed to put my quarters? I ended up thumbing them into my bar of soap.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“One of the dirty secrets of the moving business is that a shipper has no idea what kind of human offal a driver might pick up for day labor.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“you can’t find a white guy who can amass the rudimentary requirements needed to be hired as a local mover.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“Carl, my erstwhile buddy, casually tossed me under the bus, saying to Mike, “U-Turn here says he can’t lift it.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

“back in the day when I was the one pissed off at the universe.”
― Finn Murphy, The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road