How American Shoppers Broke the Supply Chain

Gina Martinez, 54, has watched the vociferous U.S. appetite for stuff drive by her door every day. She lives in the house where she grew up in Wilmington, a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. When she was young, neighbors would chase trucks out of the neighborhood, she says, yelling at them for rumbling through on their way to and from the nearby twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Today, her neighborhood is, essentially, a truck stop. Huffing diesel engines rattle down quiet residential streets, despite the signs prohibiting vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds. Trucks idle on streets where the pink of bougainvilleas is muted, covered in dust. They roll over sidewalks and chip the mirrors of parked cars and spew pollution into the already-smoggy air.

Read Full Article »