The Labor Behind Free Shipping
Free shipping shields us from the intricate math of moving merchandise around the world
By Bethany May
Instagram
I’m on the checkout screen with all of the items I thoughtfully picked out. It isn’t unusual for me to sit on a virtual cart for a few days, weeks, or months to cut down on impulse buys. I try to make sure the things I purchase are things I need or really want and will use regularly. My conscious consumer ethic is to use what you have first, then try secondhand, and, when you do buy new, go slowly and thoughtfully. It’s not perfect, and the checkout screen is often one of those imperfect places where I make less thoughtful purchases.
Alongside the tally of all the prices, discounts and taxes is a little nudge: “You are only $11 away from free shipping.” I scan the website. There are only a few things that are $11, and shipping will be $10. Should I pick something out for basically no additional cost so I can get one more thing for the price I was already going to pay? None of the items around the $11 pricepoint are things on my wishlist or that I would otherwise choose to spend my money on if I had not been prompted. I could pick out something that I could give as a gift. Truthfully, around the holidays, I often add another item to my cart to meet the free shipping threshold. But this extra math at the checkout screen is complicated.
I know this is just addition and subtraction. Add another item, a few more dollars, and then you get to subtract the shipping fee — but the implications of free shipping are not as straightforward as math (and I hate math). By the time I get to my cart to check out, I’ve already added to the equation what these items are worth to me and whether it’s a good trade to give my money to this business at this particular moment. But there’s more.
Shipping is never free.
I think about shipping differently now than I did a few years ago. I’ve worked in the trucking industry on and off since 2011, and I’ve spent many of my days around brokers, dispatchers, safety and maintenance professionals, executives and truck drivers themselves. I spend 40 hours a week thinking about and working alongside all of these men and women who deliver America’s freight. We are several years away — if not several decades — from traveling alongside truly autonomous trucks that would require fewer drivers on our roads, so there is no machine to do this work magically. A human being does it. And that isn’t free.
Nothing on the shelf or on my doorstep got there by magic. It got there by someone’s hard work. Not magic. Sweat. Muscle. Brains.
The most common pay model for truck drivers is by the mile. This means that instead of being paid for their time, they are paid when the wheels of their truck are turning. Congestion, bad weather, equipment failures, and other challenges outside of their control are not compensable as driving time. (Note: Drivers do, of course, have to make at least minimum wage, $7.25/hour, while they are on the clock).
The pay-by-mile model doesn’t mean that all drivers are poorly compensated for their work. It’s not rare for drivers with experience at large companies to make over $100,000 a year and be highly esteemed and treated well by their employers. Drivers who choose to be independent contractors and drive for themselves have the flexibility to take the loads that they want and turn down customers that aren’t worth their time and effort. Immigrant drivers who drive under the independent contractor model sometimes work nine or ten months a year, and then take a long vacation to go visit family abroad. It can be a great career that allows drivers to visit all kinds of communities and see the country from behind the wheel. That is not the only experience of delivering freight, though.
It is a demanding job that requires drivers to operate 30,000 lbs of truck while moving 65 miles per hour surrounded by vehicles that slide in and out of the truck’s many large blindspots. Maneuvering these machines in tight spaces or at challenging angles is a skill to behold. The body of knowledge interstate trucking requires isn’t just extensive, it’s fluid. In one shift, a driver might travel through several states and need to comply with the laws of each one. Federal laws regulating how many hours a driver is allowed on one shift help make the roads safer, but they also introduce challenges. If a driver runs out of hours on her driving clock before she finds a safe place to park for the night (an increasing problem), she has few good options. There are more trucks on the road than there were 10, 20, 30 years ago, but parking infrastructure has not kept up with increased truck traffic. “Will there be a place to park tonight when my work day is over?” is a real question that drivers have to answer after every shift.
While traffic eased up during the pandemic, other parts of the job got more difficult. I spent last spring getting permits and trying to coordinate food trucks at some of my state’s rest stops because, when restaurants closed down, there were few places where the truck drivers carrying food, medical supplies and toilet paper could get a meal. Drive-thru windows don’t accommodate an 18-wheeler, and most of those places don’t allow customers to walk up to the window. It was unclear where they could go to the bathroom and take showers when some states closed truck stops. Advocates for the trucking industry had to make sure that truck stops and businesses that supported drivers on the road were also categorized as “essential” workers because they are part of the supply chain as well. Drivers aren’t machines. If they are going to keep delivering supplies, they need places to care for themselves on the job.
To the public, trucking is often neutral at best. Big trucks on the road beside your Corolla are thought of as a nuisance, and though the equipment is cleaner and more efficient than it has ever been, it’s not carbon neutral. Crashes happen, and despite the fact that 80% of accidents are the fault of passenger vehicle drivers, when a commercial vehicle is involved, it’s more likely to cause injuries or fatalities because of the weight, size, and how much distance it takes to bring a large truck to a stop (about two football fields if the truck is moving at highway speeds in regular weather conditions).
Somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew that everything I bought was once carried on a truck at some point. Even the most farm-to-table business is getting deliveries of something: the seeds, some equipment or the sign out front. Nothing on the shelf or on my doorstep got there by magic. It got there by someone’s hard work. Not magic. Sweat. Muscle. Brains.
That’s why shipping isn’t free. Someone is paying for it. Likely whoever is selling you something with the promise of free shipping if you spend a few more dollars is taking on that cost themselves. For large companies, like Amazon, they are taking this cost into account. But Amazon and other large retailers are setting the expectation that shipping costs should be the responsibility of the retailer. It’s part of the frictionless experience they try to offer customers. It’s why we like them. Small businesses may not be able to meet these new expectations.
One of the consequences of the ubiquitous free shipping is that as consumers we are becoming more removed from the cost of moving things around the country, around the world. All of the things that affect the price of shipping are becoming invisible. Fuel costs, crumbling infrastructure, safety training and technology, more environmentally-friendly machines, the crashes that raise the insurance costs of the whole industry are all part of the equation.
That’s why I hesitate over my cart before I throw another item on my order to convince the retailer to pay to deliver it instead of me. Knowing what it costs, doing the mental math of what all that labor is worth is part of my consciousness. For me, being a conscious shopper means considering every part of the supply chain from workers in textile factories to the drivers traveling the final mile to deliver products to my doorstep.
Editor: Iris Aguilar | Designer: Kelsey Wolf | Illustrator: Rabbit Person Illustration |
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