The blue dot on my smartphone screen is pulsing with a rhythmic, digital heartbeat. It is currently hovering over the intersection of 53rd Street and an alleyway I suspect is mostly used by alley cats and illicit cigarette breaks. That blue dot represents a carnitas burrito. It cost me exactly $23 including the service fee, the small-order surcharge, and a tip for Hector, who has successfully completed 113 deliveries this month. I know Hector’s location within a margin of 13 feet. I know that he is currently waiting for a red light to turn green, and I suspect the burrito is still steaming inside its foil cocoon. I have total, unadulterated visibility into the life of a lunch wrap.

The Calculated Silence

I imagine most people assume this is a technological limitation. We assume that tracking a 3,303-pound piece of German engineering across a continent is somehow more difficult than tracking a sourdough burrito in a Honda Civic. We are wrong. The technology exists. A ruggedized GPS tracker costs about $43. The cellular data to transmit that location costs pennies.

If you don’t know exactly where your car is, you can’t complain that it has been sitting in a rest stop in Nebraska for 23 hours while the driver sleeps off a bender. If you don’t know it’s late, you can’t demand a refund for the delay.

Cargo vs. Machine

There is a psychological shift that happens when a service provider hides the process from the consumer. By denying us the blue dot, they deny us the right to participate in the reality of the journey. They want us to believe in the magic of the ‘arrival’ rather than the grittiness of the ‘transit.’

Missouri: A Geological Abstraction

This is where the industry fails us. They force us to act like amateur detectives, piecing together clues from 13-second phone calls with dispatchers who sound like they are shouting from the bottom of a well. ‘Yeah, he’s in Missouri,’ they say. Missouri is 69,703 square miles.

I don’t want a state. I want a street. I want to see the little digital moped. I want the transparency that we have somehow managed to give to a bundle of cilantro and pork but denied to a vehicle that costs more than some people’s homes.

The ‘No News is Good News’ Relic

In a world where I can see the exact temperature of my smart-fridge from 2,003 miles away, being told that my car is ‘somewhere in the Midwest’ feels like a personal insult.

The Leverage of Infrequency

We have been conditioned by Amazon and Uber to expect total transparency. But the heavy haulage industry has managed to insulate itself from these expectations. They rely on the fact that car shipping is an infrequent purchase for most people. You might ship a car 3 times in your entire life. Because of that, you don’t have the leverage of a repeat customer. You are a one-time problem to be managed, not a client to be served.

This lack of transparency creates a vacuum that is usually filled by fear and misinformation. It’s the reason why I spent 23 minutes this afternoon looking at satellite imagery of truck stops in St. Louis, hoping to catch a glimpse of a silver trailer.

Without a centralized hub of actual, lived experiences, we are just individuals shouting into the void, hoping our $93,003 property doesn’t vanish into the statistics of ‘lost or damaged’ cargo. I often lean on resources like

Real Transport Reviews to pierce through the corporate fog.

The 73-Hour Panic

If those cars had been tracked, the detour would have been flagged in 13 minutes. Instead, it took 73 hours of panic to find them. We need to stop accepting the ‘Information Black Hole’ as an industry standard. We need to demand the Hector-level of service for our high-value assets. If a $23 burrito deserves a map, a $93,003 car deserves a satellite constellation.

Now Arriving

I just checked the portal again. Still ‘Dispatched.’ My burrito, however, is 3 minutes away. It is currently turning right on 13th Avenue. I can see Hector’s little icon moving steadily toward my house. He is a beacon of reliability in a world of logistical shadows. I imagine him sitting in his car, the heater blasting, the smell of carnitas filling the cabin. He knows exactly where he is going. He knows exactly when he will arrive.