I recently read “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket”by Benjamin Lorr. It was a fascinating and depressing book, full of information that rocked many of my assumptions regarding the food we eat.
Lorr has a long chapter on the trucking industry, which was a real eye-opener. I have always assumed that a trucking job was a ticket to a middle-class life, but was I ever wrong. The industry recruits desperate folks and trains them for “free” and the leases them the rig after they get their license. It’s really a form of indentured servitude. After the lease fee, and various other deductions, a driver is lucky to clear a couple of hundred dollars a week.
Does anyone have any direct experience of the economics and realities of the trucking industry? Given that almost everything we buy arrives by truck from somewhere, and the current supply chain issues, this seems like a worthwhile discussion to have.