America on the road to perdition

James Doran

James Doran drives from Wall Street to Detroit to discover how the American Dream turned into a nightmare

Back on the road, the professor’s sobering words ringing in our ears, we pull over for petrol at a truck-stop close to the Ohio border. The Land Rover takes $70 worth of regular, which seems steep until we meet Bobby Earl who pays $600 to fill up the 130-gallon tank on his truck. Last year he paid about $300 for the same amount of fuel, so it is not surprising that his family-run haulage firm is finding it hard to make ends meet.

‘If people aren’t spending money, then you don’t need us to haul freight. It’s as simple as that,’ says Earl, 25, whose grandfather started the business 23 years ago and built up a fleet of 15 trucks.

‘It’s a great business, but today with the price of diesel and the small amount of freight on the road we’re down to just two trucks. Me and my dad,’ Earl adds, as he guns the engine of his Peterbilt 18-wheeler and heads back to Route 80. We follow him until Youngstown, Ohio, once an industrial powerhouse. Today it is known as the capital of the rustbelt. Driving past the scrap yards and empty factories, it is obvious how the name change came about.

As we pass Cleveland, Ohio, a newsflash on the radio warns of an impending run on National City Bank as the share price dives more than 8 per cent. Another wild day on the markets, but this is a local story.

The unemployment rate in this part of the state runs at about 10 per cent, some four points higher than in the rest of the country; 12,000 jobs have been lost this year alone. National City is just another big Cleveland employer that could soon bite the dust or be swallowed in a merger. Either way, the jobs will go. We wonder if diners at Cipriani on Wall Street – First National’s old HQ – are aware of the irony their $200 lunches are steeped in.