VITA VISSUTA

In the vast, abstract diagrams of global logistics, the last mile is always drawn as a problem of software, routing, data. But in much of Asia, the real drama unfolds in the last meter—the narrow strip of pavement between a truck and a shopfront, between a wholesale market and a street stall. That space is ruled not by algorithms but by a deceptively simple object: the trolley, the hand truck, the two-wheeled extension of the human body.

It is an object so ordinary it rarely earns a photograph, yet without it the Asian city would stall. Containers may cross oceans, distribution centers may hum with automation, but the final transfer—where goods leave the formal system and enter everyday life—still depends on steel frames, rubber wheels, and calloused hands.

In Asia, logistics does not end at the warehouse gate. It dissolves into sidewalks, alleys, staircases, wet floors, night markets. And there, the trolley reigns, as cities are built for hands, not forklifts.

In Hong Kong, the trolley is an adaptive species. The city’s verticality—its stacked shops, service elevators, loading bays that are never quite where you need them—demands tools that can bend to circumstance. Narrow hand trucks slip into freight lifts, balance improbably heavy loads, and reappear moments later on another level of the city. A delivery is rarely a straight line; it is a zigzag through security desks, ramps, back corridors, and curbside chaos.

In Bangkok, the logic is horizontal but no less complex. Here the trolley negotiates heat, humidity, uneven pavement, and the constant improvisation of street life. Sidewalks are markets, roads are loading docks, time is elastic. The hand truck moves when it can, stops when it must, waits without complaint. It is patient in a way systems are not.

What unites these cities is density. Space is scarce, margins are thin, and flexibility is everything. The trolley thrives precisely because it is not optimized. It can be overloaded, repaired, modified, borrowed. It does not need electricity or permits. It works at human speed, which in Asian cities is often the only speed that makes sense.

This is the unspoken truth of distribution here: the last segment belongs to people, not platforms.

Nowhere is this more visible than at Pak Khlong Talat, Bangkok’s great flower market. It operates on a rhythm that ignores office hours. Long before sunrise, trucks arrive loaded with orchids, marigolds, roses, jasmine—fragile, perishable, alive. From that moment on, the system fractures into hundreds of micro-movements, each carried out by hand trucks gliding over wet concrete.

Here, the trolley is not an accessory. It is infrastructure.

Bundles of flowers are stacked higher than the operator’s head, wrapped in plastic, dripping water. Loads are pushed, not pulled—body weight leaned forward, feet gripping slick floors. There is choreography in the chaos. Trolleys weave between each other with millimetric precision, guided by experience rather than rules. A glance, a pause, a shouted warning in Thai—and the flow continues.

This is logistics at its most exposed. No climate-controlled corridors, no barcodes in sight. Just speed, timing, and trust. The flower has a short life; delay is decay. The trolley makes time visible. Every trip is a small wager against heat and gravity.

What fascinates is how the hand truck collapses scale. The same orchids that will decorate hotel lobbies, wedding halls, airport lounges, and temples across the city all pass through this narrow funnel of human-powered transport. Global supply chains end here, not with a signature on a tablet, but with a wheel crossing a threshold.

Why the trolley endures? In an era obsessed with automation, the persistence of the trolley is not nostalgia—it is efficiency under constraint. Asian cities are not blank slates. They are layered, improvised, alive. Systems that work in distribution parks collapse in old neighborhoods. The hand truck survives because it adapts instantly.

It also preserves something intangible: dignity of labor. The trolley does not erase the worker; it amplifies them. Skill matters—how to stack, how to balance, how to read the street. This knowledge is local, embodied, and passed down without manuals.

In my “vitavissuta” terms, the trolley is a quiet witness. It carries not just goods but mornings, livelihoods, rituals. It is scratched, bent, repaired with wire and faith. It tells the story of cities that move forward by leaning on what works, not what dazzles.

When you photograph logistics in Asia, forget the ports and the cranes for a moment. Follow the trolley instead. That is where the city breathes.

This morning I returned to Pak Khlong Talat, here in Bangkok, with the specific aim of observing and documenting the constant, almost atomic movement that animates this extraordinary market.

I had taken a series of photographs here a couple of years ago with a Leica M11 Monochrom, (check here the link) but today I came back with my Leica Q3 43.