If you choose lobster from a menu, then wherever you are in the world, the odds are that your dinner may have come from Arichat in Nova Scotia. The lobster, trapped off the Canadian coast, would have been driven to Louisville, Kentucky, where, cocooned in gel packs and styrofoam, it went for a wild ride on the carousels of the UPS superhub, where 17,000 high-speed conveyor belts, carrying more than 8m packages a week, whisk your living lobster to a plane and on onto tables across the globe.
    John McPhee's new book is about supply lines: how a lobster shares a conveyor belt with Bentley spare parts and jockey underwear. It is about boats, trains and trucks, but mostly it is about the people who drive, tend and love the machines. Don Ainsworth owns an 18-wheeler with 'a tractor of such dark sapphire that only bright sunlight could bring forth its colour.' To wash his truck Mr. Ainsworth uses only water that has either been de-ionised or has undergone reverse-osmosis; anything else leaves spots. 'This is as close as a man will ever know', he says, 'what it feels like to be a truly gorgeous woman. People give us looks, going thumbs up.'
    He carries chemicals all across North America where his enemies are gators, bears and four-wheelers.' Gators are huge strips of shredded tyre littering the highways and just one of them 'can rip off your fuel-crossover line'. A bear is a policeman, while a four-wheeler is any vehicle that has fewer than 18 wheels. They buzz around like gnats, seemingly unaware that a real vehicle, one with 18 wheels or more, cannot stop on a dime.
    The Billy Joe Bolingis a towboat which, perversely, pushes 15 barges up the Illinois River. The barges carry 30,000 tons of pig-iron, steel, coils, fertiliser and furnace coke. Lashed together with steel cables which are then tightened with cheater bars, the Billy Joe Bolingshoves forward a metal raft that is longer than an aircraft carrier. Along the way, the captain copes with bridges, locks, currents, shoals, winter ice 18 inches thick and summer ladies flashing at him. ' We brought 12,000 tons of coke up the Illinois River,' the skipper tells the author, 'and now we're pushing 14,000 tons of coke down the Illinois River. One day they'll figure it out and put us out of a job.'
    The bosses also want to put the drivers of the coal train out of a job. They dream of automated trains running endlessly along the 1,800 miles between the strip-mines of the Powder River Basin and Georgia's Plant Scherer, the world's largest coal-fired power station. A mile-and-half long train has 133 gondolas, each of which carries 115 tons of coal, and the whole trainload will keep Plant Scherer burning for just eight hours. This book will keep you much longer. It is Mr. McPhee at his wise, wry best, writing in top gear which, as Mr Ainsworth will tell you, is the 18th: 'the going home gear, the smoke hole'.

问答题     What is the relationship between lobsters and the subject matter of this essay?

问答题     Why do people give Don Ainsworth thumbs up?

问答题     What does the author mean by 'a real vehicle, one with 18 wheels or more, cannot stop on a dime'?

问答题     Why do the bosses want to put the drivers of the coal trains out of a job?

问答题     What does Mr. Ainsworth mean by 'the 18th gear'?