The town of Bun, North Carolina, is easy to miss. It occupies a total area of just half a square

mile, and it's home to fewer than 330 people. Most of the surrounding land is used to grow tobacco

and soybeans.

But off the main road, behind a series of chain-link fences and secure gates, is the state's

primary manufacturer of highway signs.

Inside the plant, workers are busy shearing giant aluminum panels, cutting sheets of green adhesive,

and measuring out the spacing between letters.

And outside, in the shipping yard, the plant's general manager, Lee Blackman, is admiring a row of completed products.

This sign right here is 12 foot tall.

This is going somewhere on Interstate 95 in North Carolina.

This facility makes all kinds of road signs.

Stop signs, yield signs, construction signs.

But its biggest products, both by size and revenue, are those huge green signs that loom over you on the highway.

That's going to give you information about what road you're on right now, the intersections that are coming up,

what is the next town coming up, the exit, and so forth.

Signs like this are all over American highways and freeways. There are literally millions of them, and they're so familiar that many of us don't stop

to think about where they come from or why they look the way they do.

Behind every highway sign, there's a long and winding road of economic decision-making.

We want to make sure that we get a good quality product because we want it out there for 20

years. We've got to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crockett.

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