A fond farewell to (almost) 5 years of MODES

Dearest MODESians,

Well, this is it. Today is my last day at FreightWaves and my final edition of MODES … for a little while. I’m starting a new job outside of journalism in February and won’t be able to continue the MODES newsletter there. (At least for the time being.) 

MODES has published on Tiny Letter, Substack and Business Insider, but its most stable and loving home has been at FreightWaves. I launched the newsletter in 2019 as a young lady living in Chicago. I brought it over to FreightWaves in 2022. Today, I sunset it. We almost got to five years of MODES — almost! 

Since I began reporting on trucking in 2018, I’ve met hundreds of fascinating people — truck drivers, CEOs, brokers, cargo pilots, railroad conductors, professors. The job has taken me everywhere from a flower farm in Colombia to a man camp in the Arctic Circle to a Coca-Cola loading dock in the Bronx. I’ve gotten the chance to talk logistics on PBS NewsHour, Bloomberg Odd Lots, NPR, BBC World Service, NBC News, ABC News, and even French and Australian television channels. Reporting on logistics is hard work, but it’s not nearly as challenging as being in logistics. My stories wouldn’t be possible without you — the reader! — enjoying what I put out there and sending me emails on what I should report on next. (I even appreciate your hate mail. I’m still sorry about that time I used a European cabover truck instead of an American big rig on a story six years ago.)