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Pop quiz. What year did the United States of America abolished slavery? You might have answered

1865.

But are you sure about that?

Because today, we're going to talk about the modern mask of slavery in America and the indentured

servitude that is creeping into more and more of our biggest industries and trapping

more and more of us, while the rich just keep getting richer.

Welcome back to Candace.

In The Secret Life of Groceries, Benjamin Lord has a profile on a trucker that he rode with for a week while he was trying to learn about the shipping and logistics that go into our groceries. And it is shocking. And last time, I covered a story from this book and it involved a lot of reading in order to contextualize the character of Tun Lin, who was a slave labor in the shrimp industry in Thailand. This time, I won't do as much direct

reading, but rather mixed together quotations and summary to convey just how absolutely insane

and messed up the world of long-haul trucking is. And similar to the last story, this one's going to

start out seemingly somewhat mundane, and by the end of it, you'll be rethinking your entire perception of America, the grocery store, and every single product that you buy.

Because it turns out, our American way of life isn't just dependent on brutal slave labor in faraway places like Thailand or India.

More and more Americans are slipping deeper into what can only be called indentured servitude and bordering on outright slavery as well.

And truckers are a vast and underappreciated lot. So first of all, understand that everything,

everything in your life comes to you on a truck.

From the big appliances of our lives to the smallest bite of food, every single staple,

butter knife, copper wire, or ceramic mug comes via a truck.

If you build it yourself, the parts you use for building arrived on a truck. If you grow it,

the seeds, organic fertilizer, and baling wire for your compost bin arrived that way too. Trucking as an industry is gargantuan. In America, 10.7 billion tons of freight are moved per year. That breaks down to

54 million tons a day, or 350 pounds of

...