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.

Addendum: I increased my rating of this book because it has actually stuck with me more than I expected after my initial reading. I find myself referring to it often, and I have recommended it to numerous friends over the years.

If you loved Richard Scarry books as a child and flirted with a creative writing MFA as a young adult this is your book.

My rating might seem high to some but I have been interested in these transportation types for years (well not those of the canals and locks traveled by Henry Thoreau). An easy read and it brought insight into some of what goes on behind the scenes.

I read this a while ago but just remembered it, love anything about infrastructure and shipping

The part about navigating container ships and scale models of container ships was really cool

McPhee is a very good writer and his narratives are compelling reads. Part of the fun of reading this book (the sections on rail transportation) was going to Google Maps and locating some of the places that he described.

I like everything this guy writes. This book was no exception. Lots of weird interesting stories and facts packed into a quick read.

[In my ratings 2 means quite OK and 3 means good.]

These essays include some of my very favorite McPhee writing. Out in the Sort and Coal Train are remarkable. As is his signature, he sees and conveys what is fascinating and remarkable in often common activities. Or sometimes not so common, as the Ships of Port Ravel. The account of his canoe trip is unique among the chapters in failing miserably to reach his extraordinary standards of succinctness and insight, though my plebian inability to appreciate Thoreau despite kindred values may be partly to blame for my judgment. One gets the sense that he never established a strong personal connection with the barge crew, which may say a lot about the crew since McPhee's ability and generosity in doing so usually as strong as Walter Cronkite's.

A cost of McPhee's welcome personalism is occasional irritation with him. There was nothing kind among the multiple references to his wife. Mostly I chafed at his eastern establishment condescension toward Don Ainsworth in two chapters otherwise on par with Coal Train. The line in reporting is fine, but "Was I aware…? (I wasn't. It doesn't)" is one of a dozen times that to my opinion falls on the guilty side. The other side of moments of irritation is connection with a sense across several books that he has become an honored familiar . From his love of fishing, for example, "[j]ust as the body of a fish tells you how that fish makes a living, the body of a tanker can tell you what it contains."

The writing is fast-paced because it is so tight. If you've read McPhee you already know that the consistency of specificity and care, from structure to phrasing to brilliant choice of individual words, is more remarkable even than individual instances. But here are a couple delights from the first chapter: "'If the cargo starts to spill or all hell breaks loose, turn that stopcock…' All hell stayed put, to the relief of the part-owner" [himself]. "'Screw Machine Engineering', a magazine whose name a hyphen would have improved …" Or the first sentence, "[t]he little four-wheelers live on risk." "Typically we had lunch eight hours after breakfast" captures in a sentence what most of us would belabor for a paragraph.

As usual with McPhee, tote your dictionary. Ullage is the amount by which a container falls short of being full.

Interesting and different topic from most books. This book is about the time the Author has spent travelling with others who are professional "Carriers"; truck drivers, large ship drivers, etc. The book consisted of several stories with some more interesting then others. Probably the most strange thing about the book, was the ending...it just ends like the Author ran out of room to write anything more. Still a good read though.

I got about halfway through this one. The stories that are here shine a light on the life of transportation professionals circa the early 2000s. I learned a bit about what it takes to drive a semi and various large ships/barges. I learned that topless women are common on the Illinois River. All in all, though, I learned that knowing more about what truckers and ship Captains do and find interesting to talk about is not my thing.

Couldnt get through the first section. There is no flow to the story, just wandering through stuff. It's like he just wrote down his thoughts as they came and then copied it into a book without really putting it together in any fashion.

As always, McPhee makes just about anything interesting. The one exception—my first with him—is the piece in this book in which he undertakes a canoe journey mirroring that chronicled by Thoreau. An intriguing concept for a piece, but in practice I found that it somehow stripped away the magic that McPhee normally conjures with every paragraph. It was a slog to get through, where every other piece I’ve read feels like exploring an eccentric box of chocolates.

John McPhee ranks high on my list of favorite authors. While not every topic appeals to me, his elegant writing bridges any divide between us. Uncommon Carriers finds him expounding on transportation. McPhee weaves collections of facts with personalities of the people he rides along with. In this piece his subjects are an independent long haul trucker who owns his rig, a merchant marine training facility for ship handling, barge towing in tight quarters on the Illinois River, retracing a river trip made by Henry David Thoreau and his brother in 1839, a chapter that begins with lobster processing and leads into an account of the operation of the UPS sorting facility at the Louisville airport, coal transportation by rail, and, finally, a reprise with the long haul trucker. In each segment he casts light on its function and elaborates with enough detail to give an appreciation for the challenges that arise in the course of that work.