It's a soggy November morning, and the scene outside the
Holman warehouse, on the corner of Southeast Water Avenue
and Clay Street, is one of restrained bedlam: A forklift
zips in between a dozen 48-foot trailers, each containing
approximately 21 tons of telephone books, while a motley
armada of cars, trucks and vans grinds its weary way to
the loading station to pick up its precious cargo. A man
in a lumberjack shirt scrunches a few more volumes into
the trunk of his beat-up old Cadillac while two soccer
moms neatly stack books into their shiny minivan. Bells
clang when the freight trains rumble over the nearby crossing,
and freeway traffic thunders overhead on I-5.
Unfolding himself from the forklift, Jeff Stevens,
a rangy 32-year-old Seattle native, takes a hit off
a Camel. "It's a hard job," he says, leaning against
a pallet of phone books, his face camouflaged by a thick
nest of orange curls and a Bhagwan-like beard. "This
is a big damn city and there's a lot of books to put
out."
Whether it be greeted with enthusiasm ("The new phone
books are here!")
or dismay ("Has it been a whole year already?"), the
arrival of the white and yellow pages has become an
autumnal ritual for Portland residents. But while the
new phone book, with 12 pages of Internet listings and
10 pages of cell-phone services, is a testament to the
dawn of the information age, its distribution system
remains a decidedly low-tech affair. Indeed, the complex
logistics of actually getting the books to the porches
and storefronts of every home and business in the metro
area resembles nothing so much as a traveling circus.
For the past eight years, Stevens has driven up and
down the West Coast, following the migratory patterns
of the telephone book, sleeping in his white Chevy van,
taking showers in truck stops, eating on the run. In
April, the former fishery worker delivered books in
Seattle. Next month, he'll drive up to Everett, Wash.:
250,000 books. Then Medford: 350,000 books. And he won't
be alone. In fact, the phone company so relies on this
caravan of contractors that it publishes the phone book
on a staggered schedule, with new editions appearing
during different months in different cities.
Sometime in the next few weeks, more than 1.4 million
White and Yellow Pages will be landing on our collective
porch with a resounding thud. Although USWEST (through
its subsidiary, USWEST Dex) publishes the three-volume
directory, a California company named Product Development
Corporation is responsible for getting it to your door.
During the phone-book season, the company operates seven
distribution centers like the Holman building in Portland
alone and will spend roughly $500,000 delivering the
books throughout the metro area, with the "lion's share"
of that money going to wages, according to initial distribution
manager Monty Boyko. Last year, the company hired a
total of 1,275 carriers for its Portland operation.
Most are a varied assortment of local residents drawn
by the lure of quick cash. But the hard-core professionals
are like Stevens--phone-book gypsies who follow PDC
from town to town.
Sporting a white T-shirt with the USWEST logo and a
ponytail hanging down his back, 32-year-old Jim Steagall
thumps the bed of the 14-foot box van he rented for
the month. In 1991, after he was laid off from his job
rebuilding engine parts for the aerospace industry in
Phoenix, Ariz., he took a job delivering phone books.
Eight years later, he's still at it. "I try to go where
there's good weather and good friends," he explains.
Steagall specializes in hotels--his box van is big
enough to carry a decent payload but nimble enough to
navigate downtown streets. Speed is key, because carriers
are paid by the book, between 15 and 35 cents depending
on the route. Depending on how much they hustle, they
can make $6-$11 an hour. Steagall reckons his annual
income at $50,000, before expenses such as the van and
hotel rooms.
Delivering the phone book can be so lucrative for professional
carriers that many take the summer off. Standing in
the loading bay, where the smell of motor oil mixes
with the scent of pizza, Fritos and stale sweat, Stevens
looks forward to returning to his summer profession:
gold mining in California's Siskiyou County. "I make
enough money to pay all my bills in the winter time,"
he says through a mouthful of pizza.
But Stevens isn't planning to remain in the directory
business forever, because of his concerns about the
information revolution. Soon, he says, people's fingers
won't be walking, but clicking.
"Phone books aren't going to be around for ever," he
explains.
"When everyone in the country has a computer, that's
going to put us
out of business."
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 23,
1999
