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. Months before Yellow closed I had amassed a full pile of notes. 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. Those people inside this place, those workers who were not only hip to the LTL game, but workers who could see the blatant atrophy of the place, it didn’t take some big mental calculation to see where the company was headed. Awkward looking chess pieces were moving into place. Before any shroud was thrown over this place, I was pressed to jot down accurate notes. It was an inner reaction, a reflex. It was essential to capture moments and ideas at this stage.
So, before the Yellow ship was to actually go under, I knew that I had an obligation (even if it was only private and personal) to make something more than just piles of semi-coherent ramblings. Whether the ideas had been put to paper, or if they were just firmly stationed within my head, everything was fresh. Even as incomplete ideas of design or experience, everything was within reach despite completeness. In other words, I could see the material and where it was going. The real problem was one of energy. Eventually a log was created to help me along.
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 the project even if I wasn’t excited about it. There was no use in arguing with myself about it, I knew that despite the scope of the whole thing, it had to get done. It also 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.
By the middle of August, 2023 it was time to begin piecing together the tangible and the intangible. Hard to say which had more volume, but it did blend. Some of it was an unexpected concoction that took me into new directions. And a crossroads emerged. I had three different directions. I hadn’t anticipated this much material.
The first direction was obvious. Even if it had the appearance of a succinct expression, the work had to be tight even if wrought with repetitiveness. It had to get wrapped in under 200 pages. It not only had the potential to become something fat (a look alike of the old yellow pages that we older people remember all too well), but it needed to be free of all the schematics, the dock lay-outs, and the flat space materials. Without throwing a lasso on it, it 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 those ideas were applicable or not. I might reference them, but I couldn't draw on them. This was about Yellow Freight. It needed to conclude close to the ground. So, the first direction ended up with 12 chapters, roughly 170(+) pages.
The second direction, though full of value even if some of it might have the appearance of hearsay, much of it had a weird archaeology, and 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, 7-The Tracy Doors & 12-Dead Lifts were 2 chapters that would have stepped ahead of 9-The Utility Drivers. I was already losing value. The wholeness of the project was getting away from me. It 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 here. 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. 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 to just put all my material out there. And for myself, I had my own personal ogre . . . . a 500(+) page lumbering giant that was tugging on me a little, but not a lot. One focal point was to take all of the venom out of it, or as much as I could, no matter what size. In the end, it had to be cold.
By September, 2024, it was done. A hard copy was printed out and notarized as well. There have been some revisions and edits to it since then, but not much. The final entry within the working log was September 26th, 2024.
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 set it somewhere within the internet/web record. And that’s it. Besides, there was no more energy. Though I had sent it as an attachment within a few waves of emails, mostly to academia, as a 12 chapter collection (whether poorly written or not), I consider it a dull piece of cardboard with purpose. I'm certain that keeping it at 173 pages was correct.
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.
Time to respectfully clock out,
Daniel A. Pino
Author, and former employee of Yellow Freight