Freight by Ryan Lowell

Published by  ‎ Little, Brown and Company on August 11, 2026

Freight is a heist novel, but the heist comes late in the story. Most of its pages tell a story of truckers and dispatchers and the miserable lives they lead. Given the hapless nature of the characters, the reader expects the heist to go sideways. In that regard, the reader will not be disappointed.

The novel has an ensemble cast. One of the most sympathetic characters, Curtis, works as a third shift dispatcher at a Bangor trucking company. He hates his job and has a strained relationship with his wife Rachel. From a sense of duty, Curtis occasionally drops by to see his high school friend Adam, a recovering (or not) addict who lives in a room above his parents’ garage. Talking about a mutual friend, Curtis tells Adam that people from high school never turn out as you’d expect, but Curtis is really talking about Adam and maybe himself.

Billy and Jimmy are truck drivers. They concoct a plan to steal the tractor and trailer driven by Theo after he picks up a load from a pharmaceutical company in Canada. Billy likes to brag about his sexual exploits and seems uncertain about Jimmy when he shows little interest in scoring with one of the two women they meet in a motel bar. Billy’s plan to steal the truck assures that Jimmy takes the greater risk.

Theo prefers his own company to time spent with others, including his wife. Theo has been shagging Sarah on the side and makes the mistake of inviting her to accompany him on his trip to Canada. Theo worries that his wife might have left him when all his credit cards stop working.

Theo doesn’t want to interact with Sarah unless they’re having sex, an attitude that will not serve him well as the story nears its climax. Sarah drifts from man to man and is more interested in pills than stability, but — like Curtis — she is a reasonably nice person.

Stephanie works as a clerk at a convenience store, where she found a job for Sarah. Stephanie knows that Sarah “had some weird thing going on with a trucker” but doesn’t know the details. When Sarah misses work for a few days without explanation, Stephanie is more concerned than anyone else, including Sarah’s alcoholic mother.

There’s a touch of Hemingway in Ryan Lowell’s no-frills writing style. Lowell also shares with Hemingway an affinity for emotionally isolated characters, loners who feel a deep sense of alienation from society. His focus on long-haul truckers who choose be alone for days at a time gives him ample opportunity to explore that theme.

The story is built on a wealth of detail about the interaction of truckers and dispatchers, including the tension between dispatchers who regard themselves as intellectually superior to truckers and truckers who feel that dispatchers don’t understand their concerns. Lowell opens a window into that world that feels authentic.

The heist is played more for comedy than drama, a choice that works well in the context of the story. The characters feel real and if none of them are wholly likeable, Lowell makes it easy to understand them and to empathize with those who deserve empathy. No character escapes the story unscathed, although it appears that one of them might have found a path to a better life until the story twists in its final pages. I recommend Freight as an enjoyable novel with a rich mix of comedy and drama that is driven by memorable characters.

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