Door To Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World Of Transportation - Plot & Excerpts
I grab one parked on my nightstand before I go downstairs to make the coffee: an empty can of lime-flavored seltzer, a bedtime thirst quencher now destined for the recycling bin. This pop-top metal can, a miracle of design that weighs half as much as a first-class letter, is emblazoned with the label “refreshe,” all in lowercase letters. This is a ghost name for a ghost product. Every grocery, retail chain, and warehouse store has its ghost brands, their own private labels of products they sell but do not make. Washing machines, mouthwash, underwear, batteries, and every flavor of soda known to man—there are ghost versions of them all, their prices lower than the “name brands,” their labels vague or silent on their true origins and journeys. It’s all part of the vast puzzle of the modern consumer economy, in which we eat, guzzle, buy, and use things with no idea who makes them, where they come from, or what great dance of men and materials transports them to us. But there are clues hidden in plain sight.
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