A Fieldwork Profile of Yellow is a 12 chapter book that examines Yellow Freight.
This insider look studies a flat plane apparatus, internal dock designs, tools, culture, and directives.
Yellow Corporation chose to enter the strange. The company rolled out a new business plan and immediately one of its largest terminals out west became a loser within the Yellow system. This is the story of the destruction of Yellow within its last stages.
~ notes, edits, & final entry ~
Even before I joined the Yellow tribe, I learned that time passes. Gates can close. People and things can quickly disperse. And memories surely fade. I’ve seen this before.
The work began as fragments of a vision. With the acceleration of Yellow’s “roll-out” business plan, alarms were going off which were outside the realm of intuition; the company had entered the ridiculous and was choosing to stay there. Some workers here were hip to the LTL game. They could see the blatant atrophy of the place. For them, it didn’t take some big mental calculation to see where the company was headed especially with awkward looking chess pieces moving into place. Months before Yellow closed I had amassed a full pile of notes. It was an inner reaction, a reflex, one that pressed me to continue to jot down accurate notes. So before the burial was final, it was essential to capture pertinent moments and working ideas even if their detail seemed unrelated and minuscule.
The new roll out phase at Yellow reconfirmed what my intuition had been suggesting; Yellow was going under. I had an obligation (even if it was only private and personal) to keep the notes going. I knew I could glean value from them even if they seemed to look like piles of semi-coherent ramblings. Whether the collection of ideas had been put to paper, or if they were images firmly stationed within my head, everything was fresh. Even as incomplete ideas of design or experience, everything I needed was within reach despite the fact that soon enough much of the ideas would escape me. Eventually much of the scenery would become wisps of smoke. Stated plainly, I could see the material and where it was going. I had some time, but not much. The real problem for me was one of energy. I wasn't excited about this project, but I knew that despite the scope of the whole thing it had to get done. A log was created to help me along.
Once Yellow officially closed, I had about a two week window to meditate on matters. It was also valuable time which allowed me to build enough personal steam to get started on it even if I was tip-toeing in. It soon became evident that it needed to remain completely private from beginning to end. Even if I could see the value of sharing ideas with others, I couldn’t draw anyone into this while under construction. I also saw the value to keep it away from mainstream media or the usual self publishing outlets. I'd build it, then build a site around it, fix it free within the internet, then walk away from it.
So by the middle of August, 2023 it was time to begin piecing together the tangible (the piles of notes I had collected) and the intangible (the designs inside my tired brain). Hard to say which had more volume, but the two sets did blend. Much of that material was dispensed upon a bare bones word processor. Some of it was set aside. I hadn’t anticipated this much material. I had constructed a concoction of new notes and new ideas that presented me with three different choices, a crossroads of book length and book value.
The first direction was obvious. The book had the potential to become something fat. I couldn't go there. The whole work had to be tight even if it was overly wrought with a tired repetitiveness. It needed to be free of schematics, of more and more dock lay-outs, and all of the flat space materials of design. Without throwing a lasso on it, the book could morph into an unnecessary operating manual, something that would take the work completely off point. Also, I was in no mood to draw on anything I had written previously, whether any of those ideas were applicable or not. I might reference them, but I couldn't draw on them. This was about Yellow Freight and it needed to conclude close to Yellow ground. Yellow was the subject. So, even if only semi-satisfied with the first direction, the wholeness of it had to end with no more than a dozen chapters, and it had to get wrapped in under 200 pages. Besides, my personal energy kept pulling me back here.
The second direction, though full of value even if within the final chapter some of it might have the appearance of hearsay, much of it had a weird archaeology. Two chapters had the potential to go completely nuclear. Just guessing, but this direction would take the book to around 300 to 350 pages. In terms of size, Chapter 7/The Tracy Doors and Chapter 12/Dead Lifts were two chapters that would have stepped ahead of Chapter 9/The Utility Drivers. With two chapters getting supercharged, I could add value. But I could lose it at the same time. The project was already rickety. The book would take on a different style. In my mind, this direction didn't seem to work.
The third direction was just a demolition derby of a work. Still plenty of value, but in the end there was no point in going there. Besides, I could see areas where I might need to retain some of these cards. I wasn’t laying down a full hand. The change to door frequency and the generation of new flat planes over and over again suggested something. Under the roof within one big west coast facility, the company was throwing paint against the wall and calling it a business plan. Some workers believed (believed mind you) that the alterations were so bad that they had to be calculated. Nobody was that stupid. Yellow not only invited a business ogre, but it created one. And everyone was to play along with it and like it. I mention that because it was that behavior which tugged on me. It was like a weak prompt to just put all my material out there. But for myself, I had my own personal ogre of a project. Like the phone book yellow pages of old, a 500 or 600 page lumbering giant was tugging on me a little, but not a lot. This direction had to be sidelined.
No matter the size, one focal point was to take all of the venom out of it, or as much as I could. In the end, it had to be cold. And by September, 2024, it was done. I remember leaning back on Labor Day and telling myself that no more is required. It could stand as is. So, a hard copy was printed out and notarized as well. There have been some revisions and edits to it since then, but not much. It was also time to close my log, final entry . . . . September 26th, 2024. The project took about a year.
A proofreading editor would have been nice. A webmaster would have done me wonders. Help was clearly needed on many levels. But the mission was to create it, to keep it private while doing so, and then quietly set it somewhere within the internet/web record. And that’s it. Besides, there was no more energy. Though I had noted it on a few boards and sent it as an attachment within a few waves of emails (mostly to academia), as a 12 chapter collection I consider it an underground work, a dull piece of faded cardboard with purpose. Keeping it less than 200 pages then setting it aside was correct. I can let it ferment for a while. I'll always stand by it.
Within my own mind, the work continues to fade away. Interest in both book and subject falls away with every passing day. Soon, the work won’t pull on me at all. It’s already shelved as another timepiece, a stand alone observation, a glance at an ugly past. It's also not worth looking at anymore. My only obligation as author is to keep the final version of the work fixed and available.
For this website, there really is no traffic to speak of . . . some days it gets zero hits. No pages are perused, no outside eyes are looking in. I’m choosing not to check its performance, nor to see if it has any new visitations. I will however pay a web hosting company annually to keep it afloat and to ensure that the whole work remains free, undiluted, and easy to access for years to come.
Time to respectfully clock out,
Daniel A. Pino
Author, and former employee of Yellow Freight