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.

"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.

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.

Supply chain porn. That's a catalog right?

Really interesting!

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.

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.

Another great one from the maestro. Such a curious mind, such a great sense of dry humor, such vocabulary, and such a beautifully pointillistic way of organizing his thoughts.

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.

Parts of this were surprisingly interesting and I learned things I would never have stumbled across otherwise, such as the incredibly complex system to control freight train traffic, or the massive amounts of coal the U.S. uses for power plants. I learned about the difficulties of steering or stopping massive ships, the disturbingly hard-working and long-suffering lives of people working for UPS to get themselves through college (and how UPS is the warehouse and distribution system for many companies including some of Amazon which makes a lot of sense), and a digression about canoeing up the Merrimack river.

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.

For some reason this one read very slowly for me, but there were some really beautiful pieces in here; classic McPhee. I most loved "Out in the Sort" (really amazing work pivoting through topics in that one) and "The Ships of Port Revel" and of course the titular "Fleet of One" character will stick with me!